The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In this, my last lecture, I should like to continue from where we left off yesterday. We were speaking of what I described as the great ‘Midnight Hour of our spiritual existence between death and rebirth’, that Midnight Hour when our human inner experience is most intense and when that which we may call spiritual companionship, our connection with the outer spiritual world, has reached its lowest ebb, so that in a certain respect during this Midnight Hour of our spiritual existence spiritual darkness surrounds us. We said also that the longing for the outer world again becomes active within us, that this longing arises through the Spirit which works in spiritual worlds, and that it enkindles a new soul-light in us, so that it becomes possible for us to see an external world of a particular kind. The external world we then see is our own past, which has run its course through previous incarnations, and the intervening periods between deaths and re-births: this we then survey as an outer world, through looking back upon what we have received from, and enjoyed in worldly existence, and upon that for which we are indebted to the world. When we thus survey our previous experiences, two things come before us with particular intensity. We have enjoyed certain things and this is shown us by spiritual vision; we have had certain joys and sorrows in life. We can survey these joys and sorrows, but we see what we have experienced in such a way that it is its spiritual value which appears to us; we see it with respect to what it has made of us.

Let us take a concrete example. We look back upon some enjoyment, some satisfaction we have had at some time in our past life. We then feel: this is not something that is past; the time when we enjoyed it does indeed lie behind us, but it is not something that is absolutely past. It is something which continues its activity into all future time and it continues it in such a manner that it still awaits what we are going to make out of it. When we have experienced some enjoyment, some satisfaction, in our soul we feel somewhat as follows when we survey it: ‘This must become a force within thee, a force in thy soul, and thou canst allow this force to act within thee in two ways. In this spiritual existence in which thou art after the Midnight of the World two things are possible; the spiritual world simply gives thee the power to bring about one of these possibilities; thou canst change this past enjoyment, this past inward satisfaction into a capacity, so that through the past enjoyment thou art able to develop a certain power in thy soul, whereby thou canst accomplish something in the world, small or great, that is of value to the world. That is one thing. The other we may express to ourselves thus: ‘I have had the enjoyment, I shall be satisfied with it, I shall take it into my soul and refresh myself through this past enjoyment.’ When we do this with much of what we have enjoyed and has given us pleasure, we produce a power within us through which we gradually degenerate and suffocate spiritually. This is one of the most important things we can learn in the spiritual world, that through enjoyment, through that which has given us pleasure, we have also become debtors to the world. There rises before our spiritual eyes the prospect of our suffocating in the after-effects of these past satisfactions and enjoyments, if we do not decide at the right time to create capacities from them which can produce something of value to life. From this you see once more, spiritual events interact with what takes place on the physical plane.

When a person fills himself more and more with the knowledge of Spiritual Science as outlined in the lecture before the last, this will pass into the instinctive life of his soul and in respect to the pleasures he has upon the physical plane will develop a feeling, like the stimulus of an inner conscience, that he must not give himself up to certain enjoyment, pleasure or joy for its own sake, but he must fill this joy with a feeling of thankfulness to the universe, to the spiritual powers of the universe; for he will know that through every pleasure, through every enjoyment he becomes a debtor to the universe. We arrive most easily and most certainly at the right attitude, in the transformation of those enjoyments and pleasures which are of a spiritual nature. Enjoyments and pleasures which can only be satisfied through the body, or through having a body on the physical plane, confront us in this period between death and rebirth as something that must be transformed if we do not wish to be slowly suffocated in them. We feel the necessity for this transformation, but we also feel that in the first place it will require many incarnations, that we must be in the spiritual world again and again between these incarnations, so that at length we may be able to bring about this transformation.

Then we discover something else in the spiritual world. We find that in our present cycle of humanity we have enjoyments and pleasures on the physical plane in which our soul-spiritual nature is entirely submerged, that the enjoyment or the pleasure, assumes a sub-human, I will not say animal character; for pleasure and enjoyment may assume a sub-human character. We find that with enjoyments such as these, we really prepare infinite pain for certain beings in the spiritual world with whom we only meet when we enter this world. And the sight of the pain we cause these beings is so extremely disturbing, so oppressive, filling our soul with such forces, that we cannot well arrive at the harmonious upbuilding of the things necessary for our next incarnation.

As regards what we experience in a different way, as pain and sorrow, it is seen on the spiritual plane that the pain and sorrow we have borne on the physical plane work on and permeate our soul with such force on the spiritual plane that this force becomes will-power. Our soul thereby becomes stronger, and we are able to transform this strength into moral power which we are able to bring back with us again to the physical plane, in order that we may not only have certain capacities, through which we are able to produce something of value to the world around us, but that we may also have the moral power to develop these capacities into character.

We have experiences such as these and many others, directly after the spiritual Midnight Hour of existence. We feel and experience what our value has become through our previous life; we also feel and experience to what capacities we may attain in the future. And after we have lived for a time longer in the spiritual world, there appears from the twilight of our spiritual environment a clear vision, not only of our own past life, but also of all the human beings with whom we were closely connected in that life; people appear in spiritual relations, with whom we have been connected in some way in former stages of existence. It is not as if we had not been with these human beings before—we are always together with those who have been near us in life, in by far the greater portion of the time between death and rebirth—but now, when we meet them again after the Midnight Hour of our spiritual existence, we see clearly in these human beings what we owe to them or they to us. Our point of view is now not merely: such and such was thy relation to these people at such and such a time—we knew this before—but these people are now for us the expression of the compensation for our previous experiences with them. By the manner in which they come before us, we see by what new experience on the physical plane we may have to repay that for which we are indebted to them, or such like. When we confront the souls of these human beings we see, as it were, the activities which in the future must reproduce the relationships we have had with them in the past. This will be best understood if we take an example which is as concrete as possible, an application of what has already been mentioned in previous lectures.

Let us again suppose that we have lied to some one. Then comes the time, when in the spiritual world the possibility arises of our being tormented by the truth, the opposite to our lie. Our relation to this person to whom we have lied so changes during this time, that as often as we see him (and we see him often enough with our spiritual eyes) he causes the truth, the opposite to the lie we have told, to rise within us and this torments us. Thereby arises from deep down within us a tendency which causes us to say: ‘Thou must meet this person again on the earth below and thou must do something that will compensate the wrong thou hast done in telling the lie; for here in the spiritual world thou canst not compensate what has been brought about through thy lie, here thou canst only see quite clearly the effect of a lie in the cosmos. What has been done upon the earth in this way must be made good again upon the earth. We know that in order to make compensation we need forces which can only develop in us when we again possess an earthly body. From this a tendency arises in our soul to take once more on ourselves an earthly body which will give us the opportunity to perform the actions whereby the imperfections we have caused upon earth may be repaired; otherwise, when we have gone through death once more this person will again appear to call forth the torment of the truth.

Thus you see the whole spiritual technique; how in the spiritual world there is produced within us the impulse karmically to make compensation for various things. These compensations occur also in other connections; but of course I should have to enumerate many thousands of cases if I were to speak of all that comes into consideration in respect of this important subject of karma. For example, let us take the following case: Let us suppose we are in the period after the Midnight Hour of existence in the spiritual world, so that we look back at certain pleasures we have had and say: ‘We can change the effects of these experiences into capacities to which we can give expression when we are re-embodied.’ But the following may also happen. We may observe that when we are changing these past experiences into capacities, in this our present condition, certain elemental beings disturb us (this can happen); these elemental beings do not allow us to acquire these capacities. We may then ask ourselves: ‘What can I do now? If I yield to these elemental beings which approach and will not suffer capacities to arise in me, I shall not be able to develop these capacities. But I must develop them. I know that I shall only be able to give the service due to certain people in my next incarnation if I have these capacities.’ As a rule in such cases we decide to acquire these capacities; but we thereby injure the elemental beings which are around us: in a certain way they feel that they are attacked by us. When we acquire these capacities, they feel that their own life is thereby darkened, as if something were taken away from their wisdom. One of the consequences often springing from this is, that when we are reborn we find that one or more human beings are possessed by these elemental beings and are inspired with particularly hostile intentions towards us.

Think how deeply this enables us to see into human experience, how profoundly it teaches us to comprehend human life and really to acquire the right instinct to comport ourselves correctly on the physical plane. But this does not mean that we should ever say, when on the physical plane: ‘At that time I had to protect myself. I have thereby made this person a sworn enemy; I must now give in to him.’ The case might arise where it would be good to yield, but, on the other hand, it might happen that if we yield, these hostile elemental beings who act through one person or another might, through what they now do on the physical plane, compensate themselves abundantly for the loss they suffered through our self-protection. They might go beyond what was taken away from them, and the consequence of this would be that we should not be able to save ourselves from them, when we again enter the corresponding period in the stream of time between death and rebirth, and they would then give the death blow to certain of our capacities.

The world becomes ever more and more complicated when we get real insight into it; but we cannot wonder at this. I might give you other examples of the karmic connections between life on earth and life between death and rebirth. Let us take the case of a person who through illness dies earlier than another who enters into ‘time’, as it were, after a normal length of human life. His illness brings him to an early death; but he really retains certain forces within him which he would have expended if he had reached the normal length of human life. The man would have used these forces, which remain within him as a reserve of strength, if he had not died early, and when the life after death is examined, the spiritual investigator finds that these forces are added to the man's forces of will and feeling, strengthening them. Such a person is in the position so to use, after the Midnight Hour of existence, what has accrued to him through these forces before the Midnight Hour of existence, that he enters earthly life as a man of stronger will and of much more character than if he had not died so early. It is, however, previous karma that determines this and naturally it would be the greatest folly if a person were to think that he would gain what has just been described by bringing about an early death artificially; he would not gain it thus. What happens when an early death is brought about artificially, you will find described in my book Theosophy, so far as it is necessary to explain it. I also referred there to the case where a person meets with an early death through an accident. When he is torn away from the experiences of the physical plane through an accident, while his forces would have still been sufficient to enable him to reach old age, there remains to him a surplus of force and when the Midnight Hour of existence has passed he can use this to strengthen his intellectual powers. We find through spiritual investigation that great inventors are often people who in former incarnations died through an accident. If we really wish to survey these things with understanding, we have to realise that in the spiritual world the standpoint of life is really quite different from what it can be in the physical world.

It will grow more and more comprehensible to you, that in order to understand the spiritual worlds one has first to acquire the necessary conceptions and ideas, because the spiritual worlds are so very different from the physical world. Hence no one should wonder when something relating to the spiritual worlds is described, that when the ideas of the physical world are directed to this description, it should at first be felt to be unsatisfactory. For example, it is a fact, which is confirmed by spiritual investigation into many cases, that if a person dies a thorough materialist, with a materialistic frame of mind, and leaves others behind who are also materialistically inclined, he at first suffers a certain loss in the spiritual world. When he has passed through the portal of death without spiritual inclinations, and wishes to look back at his loved ones on the earth, he cannot see them directly if in their souls there is no spiritual thought; he has knowledge of them only up to the time when he passed through death. His spiritual eyes cannot see what they are now experiencing below upon the earth, because there is no spiritual life in their souls; for only spiritual experience throws light up into the spiritual worlds. Before such a person can see the matter quite clearly, he has to wait until in the spiritual world itself he has developed the necessary forces with which to see clearly that the souls he has left behind are materialistically inclined because they have succumbed to Ahriman. Were he to experience this immediately after death he would be unable to bear it. He has first to grow into the knowledge that materialistically inclined souls are possessed by Ahriman; then he may begin to have vision of these souls, until they have passed the portal of death and in the spiritual world have liberated themselves from their materialistic tendencies. It is only later that he experiences union with them.

Someone might say: These conditions which you describe as taking place after death are not at all consoling. That, my dear friends, is an idea which is gained on the physical plane; it is not an idea that is filled with the understanding of the spiritual worlds. A person living between death and rebirth, comes to a point where he says: ‘Oh, how impossible, how comfortless it would be directly after death to see those souls who are materialistically inclined!’ How infinitely better it is for these souls to pass first through this period of probation! They would lose themselves, they would be unable to reach what they ought to reach if the matter were not arranged in this way. The point of view becomes entirely different when the things of the world are considered from the spiritual side, and a time will come when it will be necessary for man, while still on the physical plane, to have a correct understanding of the truths of Spiritual Science.

Spiritual Science has come into the world because the evolution of humanity requires that the knowledge of the spiritual world and its conditions should enter more and more into human souls, instinctively at first, then consciously. I will draw your attention to a purely external thing which is very important, in order that you may see how we shall be able more and more to judge the true contents of our life on the physical plane through understanding the laws of spiritual existence. It is something external and as an external thing is extremely important. When we consider nature, the remarkable spectacle is presented to us of a small number of seeds being used in every case to continue the same kind of life, but that an extremely large number of seeds come to nothing. We observe myriads of fish eggs in the ocean, a few only of which become fishes, the rest perish. We look out over the fields and see vast quantities of grains of wheat, only a few of which grow into plants, the rest are ground up into flour for human food and for other purposes. A great deal more has to be produced by nature than really becomes fruit and again seed in the regular course of existence. This is a wise regulation of nature; for in nature order and law exist and demand that what thus deviates from its own deeply founded routine of existence and fruiting, should be so used, that it serves the other continuing stream of existence. The various creatures would not be able to live if all seeds actually bore fruit and attained the development possible to them. Beings have to exist, which are used to form the ground-work from which other beings can grow. It is only in appearance that anything is lost, only in maya; in reality nothing is lost in the works of nature. Spirit rules in nature and the fact that something is apparently lost from the continuous stream of evolution is based upon the wisdom of the spirit, it is a spiritual Law, and we must consider this matter from the standpoint of the spirit; we then soon find that what apparently is turned aside from the straight forward stream of events, has its own well justified place in existence. This is founded in the spirit. Hence it may also be of value on the physical plane, in so far as we here live a spiritual life.

Let us consider a case which concerns us very closely. Public lectures have to be given on the subject of Spiritual Science. These are given to a public that is gathered together simply through advertisement. Something happens here which is somewhat similar to the case of the seeds of corn, a part only of which are used in the straight forward stream of existence. One must not be discouraged when, in such circumstances, one has to bring the stream of spiritual life apparently without choice before many, many people, and when only a few separate themselves and really enter into this spiritual life, become anthroposophists, and join the direct stream. Under these circumstances, it still happens that these scattered seeds come to many who, after a public lecture, go away and say, for example, ‘What mad nonsense the fellow talked!’ Seen with respect to external life, this is like the germs—shall we say—like the fish-germs that come to nothing in the ocean; but from the standpoint of a deeper investigation it is not so. Souls who through their karma come to a lecture and who then go away and say: ‘What foolish nonsense the fellow talked!’—these souls are not yet ready to receive the truth of the spirit; but it is necessary for their souls in their present incarnation to feel the approach of the power contained in Spiritual Science. However much they may scold, it remains a force in their souls for their next incarnation. Thus the germs have not been lost; they find a way. Life with respect to spiritual things is under the same laws, whether we follow the spirit in the order of nature, or in the case which we consider to be our own.

Now let us suppose we wished to carry this over into external material life, and were to say: ‘But this is just what happens in outer life.’ Yes, my dear friends, it is exactly because this is happening, that I say that we are living towards a future when this will appear in ever greater degree. More and more articles will be produced, more and more factories will be built. No one now asks, ‘How many articles are needed?’ as was formerly the case, when the tailors in the town only made a suit when someone ordered it. The need then determined the numbers to be made; but now they are produced for the market; the various wares are piled up as much as possible. Production works entirely according to the principle upon which nature works. Nature is carried into the social order, and this will at first gain the upper hand more and more. But here we are considering the material realm. The spiritual law has no application in external life, simply because it is suited only to the spiritual world; and something very remarkable results. As we are speaking among ourselves we may say these things, but at the present day the world will not agree with us in this. Things are now produced for the market regardless of the amount required, not according to what was explained in my essay on Theosophy and Social Life—all that is produced is piled up in warehouses and governed by the money market, and then the producers wait to see how many are bought. This tendency will grow greater and greater until it destroys itself and when I say the following you will know the reason. One who spiritually observes social life, sees the germ of frightful social abscesses springing up everywhere. That is the great social problem confronting those who understand life; that is the frightful fact which is so depressing and which—even if we could suppress all our enthusiasm for Spiritual Science and the impulse which makes us long for it—yet makes us cry out for the remedy for this world disease that is already so far advanced and which will become ever worse and worse. That which in one field, in one sphere, must work as nature works, is seen by one who seeks to spread abroad spiritual truths to become a cancer when it enters the sphere of culture, as we have just described.

It will only be possible to recognise this and find the remedy, when Spiritual Science lays hold of and fills the hearts and minds of men. When one sees these things, one would fain fill one's words with the most intense fire, so that the attention of as many of our contemporaries as are able to understand them may be attracted to the times we are approaching. We can perceive these things when we make ourselves acquainted with the different points of view that exist in one and another spheres of life. These different points of view confront a person, when experiencing the life between the Midnight Hour of existence and rebirth, for it is from them that he must work creatively on himself.

When he has formed the tendencies for the fulfilment of his karma in respect of his more intimate experiences, others rise before his soul which are not so intimate. He experiences the religious and other societies to which he has belonged in such a way that they reveal to him certain things he must do in his following incarnation in order not to become one-sided. In short, this life flows on in such a way that it still alternates between spiritual companionship and spiritual solitude, but its essential task is that the human being then constructs the archetype for his new earthly life in a purely spiritual form.

Long, long before the human being descends to earthly life he has constructed out of the spiritual world the spiritual etheric archetype, which has within it forces, which we might call spiritual magnetic forces. These draw him down to parents in respect of whom he feels that they give him the hereditary attributes which enable him to enter upon a new earthly life. I have already mentioned that the normal time for this is when we have the feeling that we are uniting with that which withdrew from us as the fruit of our last earthly life. But the human being does not always reach this point. When we do come to this point the course of our life is such that we fully feel the connection between the bodily part and the spiritual part, but often the man enters into life too soon. Most people are prematurely born, spiritually, and this is only compensated for later through experiences with which we feel entirely in harmony.

One thing is of very special importance which I mentioned in the last lecture. When our longing for an outer world has reached its greatest intensity because we have entered most deeply into solitude, then it is that the Spirit, which only lives and moves in spiritual worlds, approaches us and changes our longing into a kind of soul-light. Up to this point we must keep our connection with our ‘I’. We must, as it were, preserve the remembrance: Upon earth thou wast this ‘I’; this ‘I’ has to remain to thee as a memory. That man is able to do this in our age depends upon the fact that Christ brought into the earth's aura the power by which we can maintain our memory up to the Midnight Hour, when we again have this ‘I’. Otherwise this could not at the present time have been brought over from our earthly life. If the Christ-impulse had not entered the earth, an interruption would have occurred, a break, in the middle of the period between death and rebirth which would have made our existence inharmonious. Long before the Midnight Hour we should have forgotten that we were an ‘I’ in our last life; we should have felt connection with the spiritual world, but we should have forgotten ourselves. We have to develop our Ego so powerfully on earth, that we gain this Ego-consciousness ever more and more. This has become necessary since the Mystery of Golgotha. But because on earth we attain to an ever great consciousness of our Ego, we thereby exhaust the forces we have need of after death in order that we should really not forget ourselves up to the Midnight Hour of existence. In order to be able to retain this remembrance, we have to die in Christ. For this the Christ-impulse is necessary. It preserves for us up to the Midnight Hour of existence the possibility of not forgetting our ‘I’.

Then at the Midnight Hour of existence the Spirit approaches us. We have now retained the memory of our ‘I’. If we carry this on into the Midnight Hour of existence, to where the Holy Ghost approaches and gives us the vision and the connection with our own inner world, as if with an outer world—if we have kept this connection, the Spirit can then lead us further to our re-embodiment, which we bring about through having formed our archetype in the spiritual world. In reality, however, things do not take place in such a way that one does only what is necessary, but just as a pendulum never rests, but swings to one side so as to swing again to the other, and as it is right this should be so, so is it also with the spiritual life. The Christ-impulse supplies us with more than barely sufficient force just to make the connection, it gives us sometimes so much, that if the Spirit should not come to us, the Christ-impulse would be able to bear us quickly over. We should not be able to make the connection with our memory, but the Christ-impulse would carry us over. This is of great importance; and as we develop on into the future, it will be increasingly necessary for man that he should receive more than merely a bare amount of the Christ-impulse. Even at the present time, it is necessary that man should experience during his earthly life not merely what is absolutely necessary regarding Christ, but that the Christ-impulse should enter into his soul as a mightier impulse, so that it will sweep him rapidly beyond the Midnight Hour of existence. For the force of the Spirit is strengthened through the impulse of Christ, and we feel the force of the Spirit more strongly throughout the second half of our life between death and rebirth, than would be the case if the Christ-impulse were not there.

The surplus of the Christ-impulse that remains with us, strengthens the impulse of the Spirit. Otherwise the Spirit would only be active for the Spirit, and it would cease working when we were born. As we fill ourselves with the Christ-impulse it strengthens the impulse of the Holy Ghost, and thereby such a spiritual impulse is introduced to our souls that, when we enter earthly incarnation, it is not exhausted in this incarnation as are the other forces we bring with us at birth. I have already mentioned that we transform the forces we bring over from the spiritual world into our inner organisation, but the surplus which we gain in this way through the Christ-impulse strengthening the impulse of the Spirit—this we bring over with us into existence, but it does not need to be transformed during our life on earth. The further we advance into the future, the more necessary will human beings be for the development of the earth, human beings who, because they are filled with the Christ-impulse and the impulse of the Spirit, bring something into earthly life with them when they enter their new incarnation. The Spirit must work with greater power, so that it does not only work up to the time of birth, when everything that is brought from the spiritual world is transformed, so that only the tiny amount of consciousness endures which informs us of our physical environment, and of what can be understood by the intellect connected with the brain. If, as we develop towards the future we did not gradually bring with us as human beings a surplus of spirit, as has just been described, humanity would gradually reach the point where it would have no idea that there was a Spirit, then during earthly life only the unspiritual Spirit, Ahriman, would rule, and humanity would only be able to know of the physical world that is perceived by the senses, and of what is comprehended by the intellect that is connected with the brain. In the onward development of mankind, all these things are even now being experienced to a certain extent, even now humanity is in danger of losing the Holy Ghost.

But it will not lose it. Spiritual Science will be the watcher which will see that humanity does not lose the Holy Ghost, this Spirit which approaches the soul at the Midnight Hour of existence, in order to waken within it the longing to see itself in its past and recognise its value. Spiritual Science will have to speak more and more impressively of the Christ-impulse, so that more and more Spirit shall enter into physical existence through birth, in more and more human beings, and so that in this physical existence there shall be more and more human beings who feel: ‘I have certainly within me forces which have to be transformed into organising forces, but there is something also dawning in my soul which need not be transformed. I have brought with me into this physical world some of the Spirit which appertains only to the spiritual worlds, although I am living in my body.’—This is the Spirit which will enable people to see what is spoken of by Theodora in the Mystery Drama, The Portal of Initiation, namely, the etheric form of Christ. The power of the Spirit which thus enters people's bodies will open spiritual eyes through which to see and understand the spiritual worlds. First, people will have to understand them, and then they will begin with understanding to behold them; vision will come, because the Spirit so lays hold of people's souls that they will be able to bring this Spirit into their bodies, and the Spirit will shine out even in their earthly incarnations; it will dawn first in a few, and then in a larger number. So we may say: Through the Spirit, through the Holy Ghost we are awakened in the great Midnight Hour of existence. So also from another side we may say—when we bear in mind what the Spirit provides for earthly evolution in the future:—the best part of the soul, that by which we are enabled to see into the spiritual worlds, will be awakened more and more by the Holy Ghost even when in the physical body. As man is awakened by the Holy Ghost in the Midnight Hour of existence, so also will he be awakened while living in his physical body on the physical plane. He will waken inwardly through the Spirit rousing him out of the sleep of sense; otherwise through mere sense-perception and through the intellect that is connected with the brain, man would always remain asleep. The Spirit will shine into this human sleep, which as it developed toward the future would otherwise gradually overcome humanity. The spirit in man will shine into this sleep even during physical existence. In the midst of the decline of spiritual life, in the midst of spiritual death, caused by an outlook based merely on sense-perception and a brain-bound intellect, the souls of men will be awakened by the Holy Ghost—even now during physical existence:

PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS

Anyone who wishes to attach any value to the form of spiritual-scientific world view that I will be speaking about today and tomorrow will need to familiarize themselves with the peculiar contradiction inherent in the development of humanity, namely that a spiritual current, a spiritual impulse, can be eminently timely from a certain higher point of view, and that this timeliness is nevertheless at first sharply rejected by contemporaries, rejected in a way that one might say is thoroughly understandable.

The impulse for a new view of the universe of space, which Copernicus gave at the dawn of the new era, was timely from the point of view that the development of humanity at the time of Copernicus made it necessary for this impulse to come. This impulse proved to be quite untimely for a long time to come, in that it was opposed by all those who wanted to hold on to old habits of thought, to prejudices that were centuries and millennia old. To the followers of spiritual science, this spiritual scientific world view appears to be in keeping with the times, and it is out of date from the point of view of those who still judge it from that perspective. Nevertheless, I believe that in the course of today's and tomorrow's lecture I will be able to show that in the subconscious depths of the soul of contemporary humanity there exists something like a yearning for this spiritual-scientific world view and something like a hope lives for it:

As it presents itself at first, this spiritual science wants to be a genuine continuation of the scientific work of the spirit, as it has been done in the last centuries. And it would be quite wrong to believe that this spiritual science somehow developed opposition to the great triumphs, to the immense achievements and the far-sighted truths that natural scientific thinking of the last centuries has brought. On the contrary, what natural science was and is for the knowledge of the external world, that this spiritual science wants to be for the knowledge of the spiritual world. In this way, it could almost be called a child of the scientific way of thinking, although this will still be doubted in the broadest circles today.

In order to give an idea, not a proof, but initially an idea that should lead to understanding, the following is said about the relationship between the spiritual science meant here and the scientific world view: If we look at the great, powerful of the development of natural science knowledge in the last three to four centuries, we say that on the one hand it has brought immeasurable truths across the broad horizon of human knowledge, and on the other hand that this thinking has been incorporated into practical life. Everywhere we see the benefits of this in the fields of technology and commerce, which have been brought to us by the laws and insights of natural science that have been incorporated into practical life. If we now wish to form an idea of the attitude of spiritual science to these advances, we can begin by making a comparison. We can look at the farmer who cultivates his field and reaps the fruits of the field. The greater part of these fruits of the field are taken into human life and used for human sustenance; only a small part remains. This is used for the new sowing of the fruits. Only the latter part can be said to be allowed to follow the driving forces, the inner life and formative forces that lie in the sprouting grain, in the sprouting fruit itself. What is brought into the barns is mostly diverted from its own developmental progress, is, as it were, led into a side stream, used for human food, and does not directly continue what lies in the germs, what the own driving forces are.

Thus, the spiritual science referred to here appears to be more or less what natural science has brought in the way of knowledge in recent centuries. By far the greatest part of this has rightly been used to gain insight into external, sensual-spatial facts, and has been used for human benefit. But there is something left over in the human soul from the ideas that the study of nature has provided in recent centuries that is not used to understand this or that in the sensual world, that is not used to build machines or maintain industries, but that is brought to life so that it is preserved in its own right, like grain that is used for sowing again and allowed to follow its own laws of formation. man imbues himself with the wonderful fruits of knowledge that natural science has brought forth, when he allows this to live in his soul, when he has a feeling for asking: How can the life of the soul be illuminated and recognized through the concepts and ideas that natural science has provided? How can one live with these ideas? How can one use them to understand the main driving forces of human soul life? If the human soul has a feeling for raising these questions with the spiritual treasure acquired, not in theory but with the full wealth of soul life, then what can only now, in our time, when science has been cultivated on its own ground, so to speak, for a while, merge into human culture.

And in another respect too, this spiritual science can be called a child of the scientific way of thinking, only the spirit must be investigated in a different way from nature. Precisely if one wants to approach the spirit with the same certainty, method and scientific basis as natural science approaches nature, then one must transform scientific thinking and shape it in such a way that it becomes a suitable tool for the knowledge of the spirit. These lectures will share some insights into how this can be achieved. Especially when one is firmly grounded in natural science, one realizes that the means by which it works cannot be used to gain spiritual knowledge. Time and again, enlightened minds have spoken of the fact that, starting from the firm ground of natural science, man must recognize that his power of knowledge is limited. Natural science and Kantianism — to mention only these — have contributed to the belief that the cognitive powers of the human mind are limited, that man cannot penetrate through his knowledge into the regions where the source lies, to which the soul must feel connected; where man realizes that not only the forces that can be grasped by natural science are at work, but other forces as well. In this respect spiritual science completely agrees with natural science. Precisely for the cognitive abilities that natural science has magnified, and on which natural science must also stop as such, there is no possibility of penetrating into the spiritual realm.

But in the human soul lie dormant other cognitive faculties, cognitive faculties that cannot be used in everyday life and in the hustle and bustle of ordinary science, but that can be brought forth from this human soul and that, when they are brought forth, when they are, as it were, from the hidden depths of the human soul, then they make something different out of the person: they permeate him with a new kind of knowledge, with a kind of knowledge that can penetrate into areas that are closed to mere natural science. It is (I attach no special value to the expression, but it clarifies the matter) a kind of spiritual chemistry through which one can penetrate into the spiritual regions of existence, but a chemistry that only bears a similarity to external chemistry in terms of secure logic and methodical thinking: it is the chemistry of the human soul itself. And from this point of view, in order to make ourselves understood, I will say the following by way of comparison: when we have water before us, this water has certain properties. The chemist comes and shows that this water contains hydrogen and oxygen. Take hydrogen: it burns, it is gaseous, it is quite different from water. Would someone who knew nothing about chemistry ever be able to tell from looking at water that it contains hydrogen? Water is liquid, does not burn, and even extinguishes fire. Hydrogen burns, is a gas. In short, would someone be able to tell from looking at water that it contains hydrogen? Nevertheless, the chemist comes and separates the hydrogen from the water. Man can be compared to water as he appears in everyday life, as he appears to ordinary science. In him are united the physical and the bodily and the spiritual-soul. External science and the world view that is based on it are quite right when they say: Yes, this person standing before us cannot be seen to have a spiritual-soul within him; and it is understandable when a world view completely denies this soul-spiritual. But that is just as if one were to deny the nature of hydrogen.

However, there is a need for proof that the spiritual-soul can really be represented separately from the human being, separate from the physical body, in spiritual-soul chemistry. This can be. That there is such a spiritual-mental chemistry is what spiritual science has to say to mankind today, just as Copernicanism had to say to a surprised mankind that the earth does not stand still, but moves around the sun at a furious pace, but the sun stands still. And just as Copernican writings were on the Index until well into the 19th century, so too will the insights of spiritual science be on the Index of other worldviews for a long time to come. These are worldviews that cannot free themselves from centuries-old prejudices and habits of thought. And the fact that this spiritual science can already, to a certain extent, touch hearts and souls, that it is not exactly outside the search of our time, we have a small proof of this, which I do not want to boast about, but which may be mentioned as a testimony to, I would say, the hidden timeliness of spiritual science in souls. Are we indeed in a position, already in our time, to build a free school of spiritual science on free Swiss soil; and can we not see, through the understanding of the friends of this spiritual current, the emblem of the same in the new architectural style of the double-domed rotunda, which is to rise from Dornach's heights, near Basel, as a first external monument to what this spiritual science has to offer to modern culture? That this building is already being erected, that the forms of its domes are already rising above the rotunda, allows us today to speak of spiritual science with much more hope and inner satisfaction, despite all the opposition, despite all the lack of understanding that it encounters and must still encounter in wide circles.

What I have called spiritual chemistry is certainly not something that can be achieved through external methods that can be seen with the eyes and that are brought about by external actions. What can be called spiritual chemistry takes place only in the human soul itself, and the procedures are of an intimate soul-spiritual nature, procedures that do not leave the soul as it is in everyday life, but which affect this soul in such a way that it changes, that it becomes a completely different tool of knowledge than it usually is. And they are not some kind of, one might say, miraculous exercises, some exercises taken from superstition, which are thus applied in spiritual chemistry, but they are thoroughly inner, spiritual-soul exercises, which build on what is also present in everyday life: powers of the soul , which are always there, which we need in everyday life, but which, in this everyday life, I would say, are only used incidentally, but which must be increased immeasurably, must strengthen themselves into the unlimited if man is to become truly a spiritual knower.

The one power that is active in our whole soul life, more incidentally, but must be increased immeasurably, we can call it: attention. What is attention? Well, we do not let the life that flows past the soul shape itself; we gather ourselves up inwardly to turn our spiritual gaze to this or that. We pick out individual things, place them in the field of vision of our consciousness, and concentrate the soul forces on these details. And we may say: Only in this way is our soul life, which needs activity, also possible in everyday life, that we can develop such an interest that highlights individual events and facts and entities from the passing stream of existence. This attention is absolutely necessary in ordinary life. One will understand more and more, especially when spiritual science also penetrates a little into the soul, that what people call the memory question is basically only an attentiveness question, and that will throw important light on all educational questions. One can almost say that the more one endeavors to put the soul into the activity of attentiveness again and again, already in the growing and also in the later human being, the more the memory is strengthened. Not only does it work better for the things we have paid attention to, but the more often we can exercise this attention, the more our memory grows, the more intensively it develops. And another thing: Who has not heard today of that sad manifestation of the soul that could be called the discontinuity of consciousness? There are people today who cannot look back on their past life and remember it in its entirety, who do not know afterwards: You were with your ego in this or that experience; who do not know what they have been through. It may happen that such people leave their home because they have lost the consistency in their mental experience; that they leave their home without rhyme or reason, that they go through the world as if with the loss of their own self, so that it takes them years to find their self again and to be able to pick up where their self left off. Such phenomena would never lead to the tragedy that they often do if it were known that this integrity, this consciousness of being fully aware of oneself, also depends on the correct development of the activity of attention.

Thus, the exercise of attention is something we absolutely need in our ordinary lives. The spiritual researcher must take it up, develop it into a special inner soul strengthening, deepen it into what could be called meditation, concentration. These are the technical terms for the matter. Just as in our ordinary life, prompted by life itself, we turn our attention to this or that object, so the spiritual researcher, out of inner soul methodology, turns all soul powers to a presentation, an image, a sensation, a will impulse, an emotional mood that he can survey, that is quite clear before his soul, and on which he concentrates all the soul's powers; but he concentrates in such a way that he has suppressed, as only otherwise in deep sleep, all sensory activity directed towards the outside world, so that he has brought all thinking and striving, all worries and affects of life to a standstill, as otherwise only in deep sleep. In relation to ordinary life, man does indeed become as he otherwise does in deep sleep; only that he does not lose consciousness, that he keeps it fully awake. But all the powers of the soul, which are otherwise scattered on external experience, on the worries and concerns of existence, are concentrated on the one idea, feeling or other that has been placed by will into the center of the human soul life. As a result, the powers of the soul are concentrated and that which otherwise only slumbers, only works for this life as it were between the lines of life, that power is brought to the fore, is shaped out of the human soul; and it actually comes about that through this inner strengthening of the human soul in the concentrated activity, in the attention increased to the immeasurable, this soul learns to experience itself in such a way that it becomes capable of consciously tearing itself out of the physical-sensual body, as hydrogen is dissolved out of water by the chemical method.

However, it is an inner soul development that takes years if the spiritual researcher wants to enable his soul to tear itself away from the physical body through such attention and concentration exercises. But then the time comes when the spiritual researcher knows how to connect a meaning to the word, oh, to the word that sounds so paradoxical to today's world, to the word that seems so fantastic to this world: I experience myself as a spiritual being outside of my body and I know that this body is outside of my soul – well, like the table is outside of my body. I know that the soul, inwardly strengthened, can experience itself in this way, even if it has the body before it like a foreign object, this body with all the destinies that it undergoes in the ordinary outer life. In what he otherwise is, the human being will completely express himself as a spiritual-soul entity separate from his body. And this spiritual-soul entity then displays very different qualities than it does when it is connected to the physical-sensual body and makes use of the intellect bound to the brain.

First of all, the power of thought detaches itself from physical experience. Since I do not want to speak in abstractions, but rather report on real facts, please do not be put off by the fact that I want to describe, unembellished and without prejudice, what may still sound paradoxical today. When the spiritual researcher begins to associate a meaning with the word: You now live in your soul, you know that your soul is a truly spiritual being in which you experience yourself when you are outside of your senses and your brain, then he initially feels with his thinking as if outside of his brain, surrounding and living in his head. Yes, he knows that as long as one is in the physical body between birth and death, one must return again and again to the body. The spiritual researcher knows exactly how to observe the moment when he, after having lived with the pure spiritual-soul, returns with his thinking to his brain. He experiences how this brain offers resistance, feels how he, as it were, submerges with the waves of his earlier, purely spiritual life and then slips into his physical brain, which now, in its own activity, follows what the spiritual-soul accomplishes. This experience outside of the body and this re-immersion into the body is one of the most harrowing experiences for the spiritual researcher.

But this thinking, which is purely experiencing itself and takes place outside the brain, presents itself differently from ordinary thinking. Ordinary thoughts are shadowy compared to the thoughts that now stand before the spiritual researcher like a new world when he is outside his body. Thoughts permeate each other with inner pictorialness. That is why we call what presents itself to the spiritual eye: imaginations - but not because we believe that these only contain something fantastic or imagined, but because what is perceived there is actually experienced is experienced, imagined; but this imagination is an immersion in the things themselves, one experiences the things and processes of the spiritual world, and the things and processes of the spiritual world present themselves in imaginations before the soul. —- Thus thinking can be separated from the physical-bodily life, and the spiritual researcher can know himself in a world of spiritual processes and entities.

But other human faculties can also be detached from the purely physical and bodily. When the thinking is detached, the spiritual researcher experiences himself first in his purely spiritual and soul-like essence, after all that has been described so far. But what he experiences there with the things and processes in the spiritual world is a completely different way of perceiving than the ordinary perception. When we usually perceive things, they are there and we are here; they confront us. This is not the case from the moment we enter a spiritual world in our spiritual and soul experience, which arises around us with the same necessity as colors and light arise around the blind man when he has undergone an operation. No, we do not experience the spiritual world in the same way as the external world. This experience is such that one does not merely have the things and beings of the spiritual world before one, but one submerges oneself in them with one's entire being. Then one knows: one perceives the things and beings by having flowed into them with one's being and perceiving that which is in them in such a way that they reproduce themselves in the images that one sees. One feels that all perception is a reproduction. One feels that one is in a state of constant activity. Therefore, one could call this revival of the imaginative world of thought a spiritual mimic, a spiritual play of expressions. One tears oneself out of the bodily with its soul-spiritual; but this soul-spiritual is in perpetual activity and submerges into the processes of the spiritual world and imitates what lives in them as their own powers; and one feels so connected with the beings that one can compare this submerging with standing before a person and intuiting what is going on in his life, and having such an inner experience of it that one would show the expression of sorrow in one's own countenance if the other were sad, and show the expression of joy in one's own countenance if the other were joyful. Thus one experiences spiritually and soulfully what others are experiencing; one becomes the expression of it oneself. In the spiritual countenance, one expresses the essence of things. One is driven to active perception. One may say: spiritual research makes quite different demands on the human soul than external research, which passively accepts things. The soul is required to be inwardly active and to be able to immerse itself in things and beings and to express itself in the way that things present themselves to it.

Just as the power of thought, as a spiritual-soul power, can be separated out of the physical-bodily in spiritual chemistry, so can another power, which man otherwise only uses in the body, which, so to speak, pours itself into the body, be separated out of this body. However strange it may sound, this other power is the power of speech, the power that we otherwise use in ordinary life when speaking.

What happens when we speak? Our thoughts live within us, our thoughts vibrate with our brain; this is connected to the speech apparatus, muscles are set in motion; what we experience inwardly flows out into the words and lives in the words. From the point of view of spiritual science, we must say that in speaking we pour out what is in our soul into physical organs. The detachment of the speech power from the physical-sensory body arises from the fact that the human being increases attention, as described, and adds something else – again, an activity that is usually already present and must also be increased to an unlimited degree. This power is devotion.

We know it in those moments when we feel religious, when we are devoted to this or that being in love, when we can follow things and their laws in strict research, when we can forget ourselves with all our feelings and thoughts. We know this devotion. It actually only flows between the lines of ordinary life. The spiritual researcher must increase this power to infinity; he must strengthen it without limit. He must indeed be able to give himself up to the stream of existence in such a way as he is otherwise only given up to this stream of existence – without doing anything himself to what he experiences – in deep sleep, when all the activity of his limbs rests, when all the senses are silent, when man is only completely given up and does nothing; but then he has lapsed into unconsciousness in his sleep. But if a person can bring himself by inner volition to do it again and again as an exercise for his soul, to suppress all sensory activity, to suppress all movement of the limbs, to transfer his physical-sensual life into a state that is otherwise only in deep sleep, but to remain awake, to keep his inner and develops the feeling of being poured into the stream of existence, wanting nothing but what the world wants with one: if he evokes this feeling again and again, but evokes it apart from attention, then the soul strengthens itself more and more.

But the two exercises - the one with attention and the one with devotion - must be done separately from each other; because they contradict each other. If attention requires the highest level of concentration on one object - deep meditation - then devotion, passive devotion to the flow of existence, requires an immense increase in the feeling that we find in religious experience or in other devotion to a loved one. The fruits that man draws from such an immeasurable increase of devotion and attention are precisely that he separates his spiritual-soul life from the physical-bodily. And so the power that otherwise pours into the word, that is activated by it not remaining within itself but setting the nerves in motion, this power can be separated from the outer speech activity and remain within itself in the soul-spiritual. In this way, the power of speech – we can call it that – is torn out of its sensual-physical context, and the person experiences what, in Goethe's words, can be called spiritual hearing, spiritual listening.

Once again, the human being experiences himself outside of his body, but now in such a way that he submerges himself in things and perceives the inner essence of things; but also perceives it in such a way that he recreates it within himself, as with an inner gesture, not just with a facial expression, but with an inner gesture, as with an inner gesture. The soul-spiritual, torn out of the body, is thus activated, as when we are tempted, through a special disposition in relation to our talent for imitation, to express through our gesture what occupies us. What is done only by special talents, the soul, which is torn out of the body, does in order to perceive. It plunges into things, and it actively recreates the forces that are at play within them. All this perception in the spiritual world is an activity in which one engages, and by perceiving the activity in which one has to place oneself, because one recreates the inner weaving and essence of things, one perceives these things. In the outer, sensory world, hearing is passive; we listen. Speaking and hearing flow together in spiritual hearing. We immerse ourselves in the essence of things; we hear their inner weaving. What Pythagoras called the music of the spheres is something that the spiritual researcher can truly achieve. He immerses himself in the things and beings of the spiritual world and hears, but also speaks by uttering. What one experiences is a speaking hearing, a hearing speaking in immersing oneself in the essence of things. It is true inspiration that arises.

And a third inner activity, a third kind of inner experience, can come over the spiritual researcher if he continues to develop increased attention and devotion. What occurs to and in the spiritual researcher as he experiences himself outside his body, I would like to discuss it in the following way.

Let us consider the child. I cannot speak about this in detail, I only want to hint at what is important for the purpose of today's lecture: it is a peculiarity of the growing human being that he must give himself his direction in space, that he must give himself the way in which he is placed in space, in the course of childhood. The human being is born unable to walk or stand, initially, as we say here in Austria, having to use all fours. Then he develops those inner powers that I would call powers of uprightness, and through this something comes to the fore in man that so many deeper minds have sensed in its significance by saying: because man can rise in the vertical direction, he knows how to direct his gaze out into the vastness of the celestial space, his gaze does not merely cling to earthly things. But the essential thing is that through inner forces, through inner strength and experience, man develops out of his helpless horizontal life, so to speak, into an upright vertical life. The scientist will readily understand that the inner activity of man is something quite different from the hereditary forces that give the animal its powers of orientation in the world. The forces at work in the animal that bring the animal in this or that direction to the vertical act quite differently in man, in whom a sum of forces is at work that pulls him out of his helpless situation and that works inwardly to instruct him in the direction of space through which he is actually an earthly man in the true sense of the word, through which he first becomes what he is as a human being on earth. These forces work very much in secret. One can only cope with them when one has already delved a little into spiritual science; but it is a whole system, a great sum of forces. They are not all used up in the childlike period of man, when he learns to stand and walk. There are still forces of this kind slumbering within man; but they remain unused in the outer life of the senses and in the outer life of science.

Through the exercises of increased attention and devotion performed by the soul, the human being becomes inwardly aware of how these forces that have raised him as a child are seated within him. He becomes aware of spiritual powers of direction and of spiritual powers of movement, and the consequence of this is that he is able to add to the inner mimic, to the inner play of the features, to the inner ability to make gestures, to the inner gesture, also the inner physiognomy of his spiritual and soul life. When the soul and spirit have emerged from the physical body, when a person begins to understand as a spiritual researcher what is meant by the words: 'You experience yourself in the soul and spirit' — then the time also comes when he becomes aware of the forces that have raised him up, that have placed him vertically on the earth as a physical, sensual being. He now applies these powers in the purely spiritual-soul realm, and this enables him to use these powers differently than he does in his ordinary life; he is able to give these powers other directions, to shape himself differently than he did in physical experience during his childhood. He now knows how to develop inner movements, knows how to adapt to all directions, knows how to give his spiritual self different physiognomies than as an earthly human being; he is able to delve into other spiritual processes and beings; he knows how to connect that he transforms the powers which otherwise change him from a crawling child to an upright human being, that he transforms these in the inner spiritual things and entities, so that he becomes similar to these things and entities and thus expresses them himself and perceives them through this. That is real intuition. For the real perception of spiritual entities and processes is an immersion in them, is an assumption of their own physiognomy. While one experiences the processes in the beings through inner mimicry, while one experiences the mobility of the spiritual beings by being able to recreate their gestures; one is now able to transform oneself into things and processes, one is able to take on the form of the spiritual, and in so doing one perceives it, that one has become it oneself, so to speak.

I did not want to describe to you in general philosophical terms the way in which the spiritual researcher enters into the spiritual worlds. I wanted to describe to you as concretely as possible how this spiritual-soul experience breaks away from the bodily, from physical-sensory perception, and submerges into the spiritual world by becoming active in it. But this has become evident, that every step into the spiritual world must be accompanied by activity, that we must know with every step that things do not reveal their essence to us, but that we can only know that about things and processes of the spiritual world, which we are able to recreate, to search for, by being able to behave actively perceptively. This is the great difference between spiritual knowledge and ordinary external knowledge: that external knowledge is passively surrendered to things, while spiritual knowledge must live in perpetual activity, man must become what he wants to perceive.

Even today, or one could also say, even today, one is forgiven when one speaks of a spiritual world in general. People still put up with that. But it still seems paradoxical in our time that someone can say: A person can detach themselves from all seeing, hearing, all sensory perceptions, all thinking that is tied to the nerves and brain, and then, while everything that is experienced in physical existence disappears completely before them, can feel surrounded, know that they are surrounded by a completely new, concrete world, indeed, by a world in which processes and beings are purely spiritual, just as processes and beings in the physical world are physical. Spiritual science is not a vague pantheism, it is not a general sauce of spiritual life. In the face of spiritual science, if one speaks only of a pantheistic spiritual being, it is as if one said: I lead you to a meadow, something sprouts there, that is nature; then one leads him into a laboratory and says: That is nature, pan-nature! All the flowers and beetles and trees and shrubs, all the chemical and physical processes: Pan-Nature! People would be little satisfied with such Pan-Nature; because they know that you can only get along if you can really follow the individual. Just as little as the external science speaks of Pan-Nature, just as little spiritual science speaks of a general spirit sauce; it speaks of real, perceptible, concrete spiritual processes and entities. It must not be afraid to challenge time by saying: Just as we, when we are in the physical world, first see people around us as physical beings among, one might say, the hierarchies of physical beings, of minerals, plants, animals and human beings, the same fades from our spiritual horizon when we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world; but spiritual realms and hierarchies emerge: beings that are initially the same as human beings, beings that are higher than human beings; and just as animals, plants and minerals descend from human beings in the physical world, there are beings and creatures ascending from human beings into higher realms of existence, individual, unique spiritual entities and creatures.

How the human soul places itself in the spiritual world, what its life is like within this spiritual world according to spiritual research, which in principle has been indicated today; how the human soul has to live in this spiritual world when it lays aside the physical body at death, when it traverses the path after passing through the gate of death, in a purely spiritual world, will be the subject of the day after tomorrow. The lecture the day after tomorrow will deal with individual insights of spiritual science about this life after death.

What spiritual science develops as its method – well, you notice it immediately – it differs very significantly from what our contemporaries can admit as such, based on the thought habits that have formed over the centuries and which are just as stuck in relation to this spiritual science as the thought habits of past centuries were stuck in relation to the Copernican world system. But how should spiritual science think about the search of our time if it wants to understand itself correctly and behave correctly towards this search of our time?

The first objection that can so easily be made from our time is that one says: Yes, the spiritual scientist speaks of the fact that the soul should first develop special powers; then it can look into the spiritual world. But for the one who has not yet developed these powers, who has not yet mastered the art of forming mental images, of separating thought, of separating the powers of speech, of separating the powers of spatial orientation, of separating the powers of orientation in the world of beings, the spiritual world would be of no concern to him! Such an objection is just like that of someone who would say: For someone who cannot paint, pictures are of no concern. — That would be a pity. Only someone who has learned to paint can paint pictures. But it would be sad if the only pictures a person who could paint could understand were those that had to do with the world of nature. Of course, only the painter can paint it; but when the picture stands before man, it is the case that the human soul has the very natural powers within itself to understand the picture, even if it is not able to paint it. And the human soul has a language within itself that connects it to the living art. Such is the case with spiritual science. Only he who has become a spiritual researcher himself can discover and describe the facts, processes and entities of the spiritual world; but when the spiritual researcher endeavors — as has been attempted today, for example, with regard to the spiritual scientific method — to clothe what he has researched in the spiritual world in the words of ordinary thoughts and ideas , then what he gives can be grasped by every soul, even if it has not become a spiritual researcher; if it can only do away with all that comes from contemporary education, from education that pretends to stand on the firm ground of natural science, but in truth does not stand on it at all, but only believes it. If only the soul can rid itself of all prejudices, if it can truly devote itself to the contemplation of a picture as impartially as the mind researcher knows how to tell, then the result of spiritual research can be understood by every soul. Human souls are predisposed to truth and to the perception of truth, not to the perception of untruth and falsity, if only they clear away all the debris that accumulates from prejudice. Deep within the human soul is a secret, intimate language, the language by which everyone at every level of education and development can understand the spiritual researcher, if only they want to.

But this is precisely what the spiritual scientist finds in the search of our time. In past centuries, people believed that they could only know something about the spiritual world through religious beliefs; in recent times, these souls have been able to believe that certain knowledge can only be built on external facts; in our time, souls do not yet know this in their superconsciousness, as one might say – what they can realize in concepts and ideas and feelings, it is not yet settled -, but for the spiritual researcher it is clear: we live in a time in which, in the depths of human souls, in those depths of which these souls themselves do not yet know much, longing for spiritual science, hope for this spiritual science, is being prepared. More and more it will be recognized that old prejudices must vanish. Especially in regard to thinking many things will be recognized. Thus there will still be many people today, especially those who believe themselves to be standing on firm philosophical ground, who will say: Has not Kant proved it, has not physiology proved it, that man cannot penetrate below the sense world with his knowledge? And now along comes a spiritual science that wants to refute Kant, wants to show that what modern physiology so clearly demonstrates is not correct! Yes, spiritual science does not even want to show that what Kant says from his point of view and what modern physiology says from its point of view is incorrect; but time, the still secret search of time, will learn that there is another point of view regarding right and wrong than the one we have become accustomed to. Let us see how the real practice of life – the practice of life that is the fruitful one – relates to these things.

Someone could prove by strict arguments that man with his eyes is incapable of seeing cells, for example. Such a line of argument could be quite correct, as correct as Kant's proof that man, with the abilities that Cart knows, cannot penetrate into the essence of things. Let us assume that microscopic research did not yet exist and it was proved that man cannot see the smallest particles. This may be correct. The proof can be absolutely conclusive in every respect and nothing could be said against the strict proof that man with his eyes cannot see the smallest partial organisms of the large organisms. But that was not the point in the real progress of research; there it was important to show, despite the correctness of this proof, that physical tools can be found, microscope, telescope and others, to achieve what cannot be achieved at all demonstrably if the abilities remain unarmed, which man has. Those are right who say: Human abilities are limited; but spiritual science does not contradict them, it only shows that there is a spiritual strengthening and reinforcement of the human powers of cognition, just as there is a physical strengthening, and that despite the correctness of the opposite train of thought, fruitful spiritual research must place itself precisely beyond such correctness and incorrectness. People will learn to no longer insist on what can be proved with the limited means of proof available; they will realize that life makes other demands on the development of humanity than what is sometimes called immediately and logically certain.

And another thing must be said if the real, not merely the imagined, search of the time is to be related to what spiritual research really has as its task, as its goal. Once again, reference may be made to the truly tremendous progress of natural science. It is not surprising, in view of these great and powerful advances in natural science, that there are minds today that believe they can build a world structure on the firm ground of natural science, which, however, does not reflect on such forces as have been discussed today. Today there is a widespread, I might say materialistically colored school of thought; but it calls itself somewhat nobler because the term 'materialistic' has fallen out of favor: the monistic school of thought. This monistic school of thought, whose head is certainly the important in his scientific field Ernst Haeckel and whose field marshal is Wilhelm Ostwald. This school of thought attempts to construct a world view by building on the insights that can be gained purely from the knowledge of nature. The search of the time will come to the following conclusion in relation to such an attempt: as long as natural science stops at investigating the laws of the outer sense existence, at visualizing the connections in this outer sense existence of the soul, as long as natural science stands on firm ground. And it has truly achieved a great thing; it has achieved the great thing of thoroughly extinguishing the light of life of old prejudices. Just as Faust himself stood before nature and resorted to an external, material magic, so today, anyone who understands science can no longer resort to such material magic. But it is something else that spiritual life itself, in the ways that have been characterized, imposes an inner magic on the soul. But against all these superstitious currents of thought, against everything that seeks to explain external nature in the same way that we might explain a clock, by saying that there are little spirits inside it, and against every explanation of nature that finds this or that being behind natural phenomena, natural science has achieved great things in negation, and as a worldview. And let us take a look at how the so-called scientific view of nature works, as long as the minds can deal with eliminating the old, unhealthy concepts of all kinds of spiritual beings that are invented behind nature. As long as a front can be made against such spiritual endeavors, a scientific worldview thrives on fighting what had to be fought.

But this fight has in a sense already passed its peak, has already done its good; and today the search of the time goes to ask: By what means can we build a world view in which the human soul has space in it? Since this scientific worldview, this Haeckel-Ostwald materialism fails completely when the person understands himself correctly. It will become more and more evident that the champions of the purely materialistic world-view, in their capacity as soldiers, are great in combating ancient superstition, but that they are like warriors who have done their duty and now have no talent for developing the arts of peace, for developing industry, for tilling the soil. Natural science should not be belittled when it becomes a world view in order to combat superstitious beliefs. As long as such world view thinkers can stop at the fight, they still have something in the fight in the soul that sustains them, but when the person then wants to build a real world view in which the soul has a place, then they are like the warrior who has no talent for the arts of peace. He stands before the question of his soul, let us say, in the peacetime of worldly life, and an image of the world does not build itself up.

Such a mood will assert itself more and more in the souls; the spiritual researcher can already see these moods in the depths of the souls. Where these souls know nothing about it, the longings for what spiritual research wants to bring to the world prevail. That is the secret of our time. But if, from a higher point of view, one might say, it is thoroughly in keeping with the times, this spiritual research world view is out of touch with many contemporaries who do not yet look deeply into what they themselves actually want. Therefore, this spiritual science initially brings a world view that is seen as if it does not stand on firm scientific ground. The other world view, that of so-called monism, wants to be built solely on the foundation of external science. This world view, one can see today from its reverse side, where it must lead if the soul really wants to see its hopes and longings fulfilled. In the activity of spiritual research, of which has been spoken, what really elevates the soul to the spiritual community arises for the soul, the spiritual world arises in perceptible activity, in active perception. Through spiritual science, man can again know of the true spiritual world, of spiritual reality. The so-called monistic world view has nothing to say about this. The spiritual search of our time.

But this seeking of our time, this seeking of human souls, cannot be suppressed, and so some of our contemporaries have already become accustomed to placing their thoughts about spiritual things within themselves in such a way that these thoughts run like scientific thoughts: that the external is observed in passive devotion. What has happened? The result is that a part of our contemporaries — those who occupy themselves with it, they know it — have fallen into the habit of wanting to look at the spiritual as one looks at the sensual. I am not saying that some things that are absolutely true cannot come about in this way; but the method of such an approach is different from that of spiritual science. What is called spiritualism wants to look at spiritual beings and processes externally, without active inner perception, without rising into the spiritual worlds, externally passively, as one looks at physical-sensory processes. Whose child is purely external, we may say materialistic spiritualism? It is the child of that school of thought that takes the so-called monistic point of view and succumbs to the superstition of materialism, the mere workings of external natural laws. What — some contemporary will say — spiritism, a child of Haeckel's genuine monism? — The search of the time will be convinced that it is just with this child as with other children. Many a father and mother has the most beautiful ideas about all the things that should develop in a child, and yet sometimes a real rascal can arise. What monism dreams of as a true cultural child is not important; what is important is what really arises. Mere belief in the material will produce the belief that spirits too can only operate and reveal themselves materially. And the more pure monistic materialism would grow, the more spiritualist societies and spiritualist views would flourish everywhere as the necessary counter-image. The more the blind adherents of the Haeckel and Ostwald direction will succeed in pushing back true spiritual science in matters of world view, the more they will see that they will cultivate spiritualism, the other side of true spiritual research. As firmly as the spiritual researcher stands on the ground of the researchable, the knowable, the knowable spiritual life, he can no more follow the method that wants to materialize the spirit and passively surrender to what is spirit, while one can only experience it in the active.

But I would also like to characterize the quest of our time, which cannot yet be understood in terms of another. A man who deserves a certain amount of esteem as a philosopher has written a curious essay in a widely read journal. In it he writes, for example, that Spinoza and Kant are quite difficult for some people to read. You read yourself into them; but the concepts just wander around and swirl around – well, it is certainly not to be denied that it is so for many people when they want to read themselves into Kant or Spinoza, that the concepts swirl around in confusion. But the philosopher gives advice on how this could be done differently, in line with the search of our time. He says: Today we have a device, a technical advance, through which what is presented to the soul in the merely abstract thoughts of Kant and Spinoza can be brought to the soul quite vividly, so that one can passively surrender to it in perception. The philosopher wants to show in a kind of cinematograph how Spinoza sits down, first grinds glass, how then the idea of expansion comes over him - this is shown in changing pictures. The picture of expansion changes into the picture of thinking and so on. And so the whole ethics and world view of Spinoza could be vividly constructed in a cinematographic way. The outer search of the time would thus be taken into account. It is remarkable that the editor of the journal in question even made the following comment: “In this way, the age-old metaphysical need of man could be met by an invention that some people consider to be a gimmick, but which is very much in keeping with the times.

Now, from a certain point of view, it might be entirely appropriate to the search of our time, but only on the surface, if one could read Spinoza's “Ethics” or Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” in front of the cinematograph. Why not? It would take into account the passive devotion that is so popular today. It is so loved that one cannot believe that the spiritual must have a reality into which one can only find one's way by taking every step with it. That one expresses in oneself, in one's spiritual soul, what the essence of things is, that our time does not yet love. Let us take a look at a billboard! Let us try to guess the thoughts of the people standing in front of it. Not many people will go to a lecture where there are no slides, but only reflections that the souls also create the thoughts that are put forward, as opposed to a lecture where spiritual and psychological matters are supposedly demonstrated in slides, where one only has to passively surrender.

Anyone who looks into the search of our time, where it asserts its deepest, still unconscious hopes and longings, knows that in the depths of the soul, the urge for activity still rests; the urge to find itself again as a soul in full activity. The human soul can only be free, with a secure inner hold, if it can develop inner activity. The human soul can only find its way and find its bearings in life by becoming conscious of itself, by realizing that it is not only that which is passively given to it by the world, but by knowing that it is present when it is able to experience in activity; and of the spiritual world it can only perceive that of which it is able to take possession in activity. In reflecting on what spiritual science offers, the process of comprehension must develop into active participation; but in this way spiritual science becomes a satisfaction of the deepest, subconscious impulses in the souls of the present, and in this way it meets the most intimate search of our time. For with regard to the things touched on here, our time is a time of transition. It is easy to say, even trivial, that we live in a time of transition, because every time is a time of transition. Therefore, it is always correct to say that we live in a time of transition. But if one emphasizes that one lives in a time of transition, it depends much more on what any given time is in transition from. If we now want to describe our time in its transition, we have to say: it was necessary - because only through this could the natural sciences and what has been achieved through them come about - that for centuries humanity went through an education towards passivity; because only in this way, through devotion to materialistic truths, could it be achieved what had to be achieved, especially in the field of natural science. But the fact is that life unfolds in rhythms. Just as a pendulum swings up and then swings down again, swinging to the opposite side, so too must the human soul, when it has been educated in a justifiable way for a period of time to be faithfully and passively devoted, pull itself together again in order to find itself again; in order to take hold of itself, it must pull itself together to become active. For what has it become through passivity? Well, what it has become through passivity, I will say it unashamedly with a radical-sounding sentence that will certainly sound much too paradoxical to many. But on the other hand, it is precisely the assimilation of spiritual science that shows, as it actually is only the fact, that one does not pull oneself together to face the consequences of the scientific world view if one does not emphasize this radical result. They lack the courage to draw the real consequences, even those who claim to stand solely and exclusively on the ground of what true science yields. If they had this consistency, then one would hear strange words murmured through the seeking of the time.

The Old Testament documents begin with words – I do not want to talk about their inner meaning today; everyone may take the words as they can take them; some may consider them to be an image, others an expression of a fact: everyone can agree on what I have to say about these words – the words are: “You shall be as God, knowing – or discerning – good and evil!” The words resound in our ears, from the beginning of the Old Testament. However you look at it, you have to admit that it expresses something momentous for human nature and the human soul. It is attributed to the tempter, who approaches man and whispers in his ear: “If you follow me, you will be like a god and distinguish good from evil.” It will be possible to surmise that the inclination not only towards good would not express itself in man without this temptation; that without this temptation the inclination would have arisen only towards good, so that all human freedom is in some way connected with what these words express. But they do express that man was, as it were, invited by the tempter to look beyond himself as a different being from what he is: to behave like a god towards good and evil. As I said, however you may think about these words and the tempter, I am certainly not demanding today that you immediately accept him as a real being – although it is quite true for those who see through things, the word: “The devil is never felt by the people, even when he has them by the collar.” But he who is able to eavesdrop a little on the search of the time, hears today in this search of the time his whispering again. It is drawing near. Call it a voice of the soul or whatever you will: there it is — it can be said without any superstition. And for those who have the courage to draw the final consequences of a purely scientific worldview, it brings forth words of great peculiarity, of a strange wisdom. It is just that the people who claim to be on the basis of pure science do not have the courage to draw the final conclusion. They do include in their feelings and thoughts the belief in a distinction between good and evil, which they would actually have to deny if they wanted to be purely on the basis of science. It is a fact that as soon as one places oneself on the ground of mere natural science, not only does the sun shine equally on good and evil, but according to the laws of nature, evil is performed from human nature just as much as good. And so he, the tempter, drawing the conclusion, whispers to man: Don't you see, you are just like highly developed animals. You are like animals and cannot distinguish between good and evil. — This is what makes our time a time of transition, that the tempter speaks to us again in our time with the opposite voice to that with which he spoke according to the Old Testament: You are only developed animals and so, if you understand yourselves, you cannot make any distinction between good and evil.

If one had the courage to be consistent, it would be the expression of a pure, passively surrendered worldview. That time be spared from this voice – let it be said merely figuratively – that knowledge of spiritual life be brought into the seeking of the time: that is the task, that is the goal of spiritual science. Those who still fight against this spiritual science today from the standpoint of some other science will have to realize that this fight is like the fight against Copernicanism. Now that we are also being noticed more in the world through the building of our School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, which used to ignore us, the voices of our opponents are growing louder. And when I recently objected in the writing: “What is spiritual science and how is it treated by its opponents” that the opponents of spiritual science today stand on the same point of view as the opponents of Copernicus, one who felt affected rightly said: Yes, the only difference would be that what Copernicus said are facts, while spiritual science only puts forward assertions. He does not realize, the poor man, that for people of his mind the facts of Copernicanism at that time were also nothing more than assertions, empty assertions, and he does not realize that today he calls empty assertions what, before real research, are facts, albeit facts of spiritual life. And so one can find objections raised by both the scientific and religious communities regarding this spiritual science. Just as people said at the time of Copernicus, “We cannot believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it is not in the Bible,” so people today say, “We do not believe what spiritual science has to say, because it is not in the Bible.” But people will come to terms with what spiritual science has to say, as they came to terms with what Copernicus had to say.

And again and again we must remember a man who was both a deeply learned man and a priest, who worked at the local university and who, when he gave his rector's speech about Galileo, spoke the beautiful words: At that time, the people who believed that religious ideas were being shaken stood against Galileo; but today – as this scholar said at the beginning of his rectorate – today the truly religious person knows that every new truth that is researched adds a piece to the original revelation of the divine governance of the world and to the glory of the divine world order. Thus one would like to make the opponents of spiritual science aware of something that could well have been, even if it was not really so. Let us assume that someone had stepped forward before Columbus and said: We must not discover this new land, we live well in the old land, the sun shines so beautifully there. Do we know whether the sun also shines in the newly discovered land? So it is that those who believe their religious feelings disturbed by the discoveries of spiritual science appear to the spiritual scientist in the face of his religious ideas. He must have a shaky religious concept, a weak faith, who can believe that the sun of his religious feeling will not shine on every newly discovered country, even in the spiritual realm, just as the sun that shines on the old world also shines on the new world. And anyone who faces the facts impartially can be sure that this is so. But in its quest, when time becomes more and more imbued with spiritual science, it will be touched by it in a way that many today still cannot even dream of.

Spiritual science still has many opponents, understandably so. But in this spiritual science one does feel in harmony with all those spirits of humanity who, even if they have not yet had spiritual science, have sensed those connections of the human soul with the spiritual worlds that are revealed through spiritual science. In particular, with regard to what has been said about the new word of the tempter, one feels in harmony with Schöller and his foreboding of the spiritual world. Through his own scientific studies, Schiller has gained the impression that he has to lift man out of mere animality and that the human soul has a share in a spiritual world. On the soil of spiritual science, one feels in deep harmony with a leading spirit of the newer development of world-views when one can summarize, as in a feeling, what today wants to be expressed with broader sentences, with the words of Schiller:

Now the dull barrier of animality fell,
And humanity stepped onto the cloudless brow!
And the exalted stranger, the thought,
Leaped out of the amazed brain!

In confirmation that animality receded and that the human being belongs to a spiritual world, in confirmation of such sentences, spiritual science today stands before the quest of our time.

The expansion, the strengthening, the securing of this innermost essence, this spiritual inner essence of the soul, is to be offered to the search of the time through spiritual science.

Although it is difficult in a certain respect to deal with the fundamentals of spiritual science, as it is meant here, as it was done in the lecture the day before yesterday, it may well be said that the communications relating to those research results, which are to form the subject of today's lecture, are in a certain respect actually a risk in relation to the ways of imagining and thinking of the present age. For although one may have to find some paradoxes in the lecture of the day before yesterday from the point of view of these ways of thinking and habits of mind, from such a point of view one will certainly and understandably not find it easy to see serious research in what is to be said today. Rather, many people in the present day will be inclined to see it only as the ravings of a strange fantasist. One must be fully aware of this when speaking about these things; aware that everything that enters into general consciousness at a later time, much of what then later becomes a matter of course, is something paradoxical and fantastic in the time when it first appears.

I would just like to say this in advance to characterize how aware the spiritual researcher is of all the things that can understandably be felt when he allows himself to share his research results, which still seem paradoxical for today's time.

Before I come to these research results, I would like to characterize the basic mood of the spiritual researcher's soul in a few introductory words. This basic mood is quite different from the mood towards another field of research. While in our knowledge of the external world and also in our knowledge of ordinary science, we today have the feeling, with a certain amount of justification, that we have the powers of knowledge within us, that we only need to put them into effect, so to speak, and then we can judge everything that nature itself and the researcher discovers in nature. While in this research one devotes all one's efforts to the very purpose of research, to observe things and to recognize their laws through the intellect, the attitude of the spiritual researcher towards the truth, towards all striving for knowledge, is quite different. By working one's way into this spiritual research, one increasingly feels the need to devote all one's soul-work, all one's inner striving, to preparation; and more and more one gets the feeling that, when one wants to approach some truth in this or that field, one would actually like to keep waiting, keep preparing oneself further and further, because one is aware that The more effort and work one puts into the path of the soul that must be traveled before one can research, the more one matures and is ready to receive the truth. For it is the receiving of the truth that is the real subject of spiritual science. And this feeling, this mood, comes over the soul so strongly that one feels a holy awe at the approach of these things, and that one would rather wait again and again for important, essential insights of spiritual research than allow these things to enter into consciousness too soon. This requires a very special mood in the spiritual researcher himself, that mood which gradually permeates all the work, as was mentioned the day before yesterday as an inner soul work in exercises, and which brings about a certain attitude in the spiritual researcher towards the truth, precisely the attitude of holy awe towards the truth.

Having said this, I would now like to enter, without prejudice, into what will be said about the important, meaningful subject so close to every soul this evening. Certainly, there are not the worst minds in our present time that still hold on to the opinion that the truths of faith are special and the truths of knowledge are also special, and that everything that man can imagine as going beyond birth and death is only an object of faith, not of strictly provable science. It is precisely this strict separation between faith and knowledge that is abolished by spiritual science. And one feels in harmony with what has long wanted to enter into modern spiritual striving when the truths that lie beyond death are developed in the sense in which it is to be done here; one feels in harmony with it when one repeatedly bears in mind the fact that that the great Lessing did indeed deal with one of the main truths of this spiritual science, in the work that he wrote as his spiritual testament shortly before his death, the mature fruit of his thinking and meditating: his “Education of the Human Race”. Lessing does not shy away from saying that the belief in repeated lives on Earth does not necessarily have to be an error because it occurred, as it were, as something that the human race came up with before the prejudices of school and philosophers had yet cast something of a hazy veil over what humanity knew from the beyond of death at the beginning of its cultural development. In this way one feels in harmony with the best personalities who have integrated their striving into the cultural development of humanity, especially if one stands on the ground of this spiritual science.

It was said the day before yesterday that the things of spiritual life, the processes of the same, can only be researched when, through what was described the day before yesterday, the human being really comes to strengthen the forces slumbering in his soul so much that this soul finds the possibility - it was said comparatively: as the chemist extracts hydrogen from water — so the soul of the spiritual researcher finds the possibility, through soul exercises, to withdraw from the physical body and to experience itself separately from the physical body, so that it can then associate a meaning with the word: I experience myself as a spiritual being outside of my body, and my body, with everything that belongs to it in the sense world, stands before me as an external object stands before us when we look at it with our eyes or touch it with our hands. And already during the last time when I was allowed to give some public lectures here, I was able to draw attention to the significant moment that occurs in the life of the spiritual researcher when, through the exercises mentioned the day before yesterday, this spiritual researcher has truly matured. If you want to know more about these exercises, you can find it in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' and in my 'Occult Science in Outline'. Here too, only the principle of what the spiritual researcher experiences is to be pointed out. When he has brought his soul to the point where it can emerge from its body, then one day, or one might also say one night, the experience comes; for both are possible: in the midst of the usual events of the day, in the midst of the night, and if properly prepared, neither will disturb it. It can occur in a hundred different ways, I would just like to describe the typical character. It can occur either way, it will always occur in a typical way, what I am now describing: It happens that the person wakes up as if from sleep; he knows: something is happening that is not a dream. He is removed from all external perception, all sorrows, all passions, all that connects him to the day. Or in the middle of the day the event occurs where one's imagination must stand still, where something completely different enters into the imagination, into consciousness. That which then enters can be like this — it will always be similar to how I describe it; I would like to describe as concretely as possible how this harrowing event can really happen for the spiritual researcher. One can have the feeling: You are now like in a house that has been struck by lightning. Your surroundings are disintegrating like a house that has been struck by lightning. The lightning goes right through you. You feel how everything to which you are materially connected is being separated from you as if by the elements, and you feel as if you are being detached from yourself, maintaining yourself as a spiritual being. It is the deepest, most harrowing impression imaginable. From that moment on, or from a similar one, one knows what it means to experience oneself in the soul, apart from one's body. And the spiritual researchers of all times have used an expression for this experience that seems fully appropriate to the one who knows this experience. For there has been a kind of spiritual research at all times, just as the different cultures required. Today's is different from those of earlier times; it is commensurate with the advances of modern science. But what is achieved through it has also been achieved through the methods that had been made possible by the different cultures. Thus, spiritual researchers of the most diverse times have described the experience just mentioned with the words: as a human being, one arrives at the gate of death. And indeed, what one can first imagine as being experienced through death actually occurs. It does not occur directly as a reality; for the spiritual researcher returns to his body and everything is as before; he perceives the external world again. But everything he experiences is a picture of what really happens when a person passes through the gate of death, when the outer, physical life ends and the life after death begins.

If we now wish to understand how the spiritual researcher comes to know the things that are mentioned here, we must bear in mind that, through the careful preparation of his soul, as has been mentioned, he attains a perception that is quite different from that of the outer senses; he can truly look into those spheres of existence that are to be discussed.

The first thing that the spiritual researcher comes to when he has overcome such a moment at the gateway of death, the first thing could be called in a sense: one reaches beyond human memory. Human memory, the human power of recollection, is indeed something that lives in our soul, as it were, as the beginning, one might say, of something spiritual. Even external philosophical researchers who know nothing of spiritual science can see this. The French researcher Bergson, who has achieved such brilliant successes, sees something purely spiritual in the memory of man that has nothing to do with biological or physiological processes. And when the prejudices of natural science, which still cling to almost everyone today, have passed, then people will realize that our memory contains something for the human soul that is, as it were, the beginning of a transition from what is bound to the senses and the brain to something purely spiritual and soul-like. When we push our perceptions back into our memory, we do not store them through any physical process, but purely in the soul. I can only hint at this. A scientific justification of what has just been said would take a great deal of time and require special lectures. Just as in ordinary life we perceive memory images that arise from the treasure trove of our soul, which, as they occur, have nothing that could lead us to mistake them for an illusion or hallucination, so now, not from the treasure of the soul, but from spiritual worlds, the spiritual processes and spiritual facts now arise before the soul of the spiritual researcher; and one then notices that behind what we call the treasure of memory, the human soul can experience something else. The spiritual researcher then sees, as it were, the following: Now you have been drawn out of your body with your soul; now you can really get an overview because it has become an external object, that which you have acquired through the sense world: the treasure of memory. But this treasure of memory is like a veil that covers something that always lives in the soul, only unconsciously; but what is covered by memory and remembrance is veiled. Yes, in the depths of the human soul there is something that is always alive in it; but when a person unfolds his memories in his soul, he covers up this subconscious spiritual-soul life. When the spiritual researcher rises into the spiritual-soul realm, one might say that his memories are attached to the comet's tail of his spiritual-soul nature. But through these memories he can see something that could be called: forces of a higher kind than those that are preserved for us by memory. If the expression were not so frowned upon – but it is difficult to find appropriate expressions for these areas that have nothing to do with the sensory world – one could use the expression: one ascends to a super-memory from memory. One gradually enters into what was imaginatively called imaginative imagining the day before yesterday. Whereas with memory one always has the feeling that the images of memory are rising and presenting themselves to the soul as you passively surrender to them, now you are immersed in what lies beyond memory and you know that you have to actively help bring forth what then arises as imagination, as the content of supermemory. But through the soul prepared for these things, one also knows that what reveals itself as lying behind memory is always there, that it was only covered by memory, and one knows, by recognizing it in its essence, that what descends into the depths that lie beneath the treasure trove of memory is itself something that is now working on our physical organism, that is active in it. A quite different discovery is made. The following discovery is being made, and it is of extraordinary significance for the relationship between spiritual research and natural science. Natural science presents itself to us today by saying: everything that a person feels, thinks and wills is bound to processes in his nervous system. It is right in saying this, but with its methods it cannot find out how the soul life is bound to the nervous system, or how thinking, for example, is bound to the brain. One has to go to much deeper foundations of the soul life. When one comes up with spiritual research, one realizes: Yes, it is quite correct for the ordinary conception of everyday life, and also for scientific work, that all the thoughts we form, and also all sensations, for example, are bound to the brain; but how are they bound to the brain? The deeper soul, of which ordinary consciousness knows nothing, which is only discovered through spiritual research, only works on, we say, a certain part of the brain, only sends its workers into the senses and brain; and through the fact that this “subconscious” soul works on the nervous system, the latter becomes a mirror to reflect what occurs in ordinary life. What occurs in ordinary life is the mirror image of the soul-spiritual. Just as if a mirror were placed here and you were to approach it, you would not see yourself but only your mirror image, so it is when you develop your everyday thinking, feeling and willing. The deeper soul works specifically on the nervous system and brain, and what it develops there makes it possible to perceive something. So it is the soul-spiritual that works on the eye, and what causes certain processes in the eye. When these processes are triggered, the eye reflects back into the spiritual-soul that which we call color. Thus it is the deeper soul-spiritual that works in the body. And spiritual research will lead humanity to this: to recognize that it is we ourselves who live in the interior of our conceptions, and that it is we ourselves, with our deeper being, who first prepare the body to become a mirroring apparatus for what the soul then experiences. This is how it is in ordinary, external, spatial life. But at the moment when our perceptions become images of memory, something else must happen; if we do not want our perceptions to flash past us like dreams before they become memory, we have to pay attention to them. Anything that is to become a memory, that is to remain with us in our soul, requires longer concentration than is necessary for mere perception, say. A color impression would not remain in our memory if we only looked at it for just as long as it takes to evoke the color. If we look at it longer, we appeal to that power that preserves all of this in our soul as a memory. We push back, as it were, our soul activity into a deeper being and this turns out not to be the physical body, but something finer, more ethereal than the physical body; and what in spiritual research with the term “ethereal,” which is frowned upon and not at all popular today. However, the word does not have the meaning usually associated with it. It presents itself as an ethereal body that is already of a spiritual nature.

But our soul does not only work by creating these images of memory; it works much more through its contact with the outside world in the life between birth and death. And that is where the spiritual researcher discovers the remarkable fact that our memories only remain images because they are stopped by the etheric body and not allowed into the physical body. If they were to flow into the physical body, they would become activity in it, these ideas, so they would merge into the formative forces, into the living forces of the physical body, would organize it thoroughly. The fact that we let our ideas be ideas, that we do not let them merge into organic forces, means that they retain the character of memory, we preserve them in their imaginative power. They can remain memories.

But the soul also develops much stronger forces in life than those that develop the memories, and these stronger forces are now also initially stored in the soul. But they lie like an over-memory behind the ordinary store of memory; they are within us. This is what the spiritual researcher experiences when he looks through memory at this super-memory treasure, that he knows: something lives in your soul that cannot have an effect on your physical body, that lies below the surface of memory, but also does not come into effect in your physical body, now, as it is between birth and death. There is something that does not remain a mere idea, but which does not become an organically active force either. The spiritual researcher experiences this by being outside of his body. But at the same time he experiences something else, which he can express when he has become clear about the fact, by saying: Yes, I experience something in my soul, which is in it, which so to speak has no application because it cannot enter the body, which is formed since birth or, let us say, conception, because it finds no accommodation in it. And now, by delving into this, which I have indicated here, the spiritual researcher experiences it in such a way that he can recognize it, as one recognizes the germ that is in a plant. The plant develops from the root to the fruit, in which the germ is. But the germ is already inherent in the whole plant. That, which is the germ, has no meaning for this plant; it cannot sink its powers into this plant; but it is in it, it is the disposition for a following plant, let us say, of the next year. When the spiritual researcher delves down, he delves into something that is a soul core, a soul germ, in him, which he knows is formed in this life between birth and death, but it does not develop its powers not in this life; he dives into the deeper layers of the soul and lies ready for a following life, as in the fruit of a plant the germ lies ready for the following plant, which could not develop without the preceding one.

In this way one comes to an understanding of the harmony of successive human lives on earth with all of nature, if one knows how to dive into the soul. The important thing is that the spiritual researcher never loses sight of the fact that what you are experiencing can only be such that you become aware of your own activity again and again; because if you are not aware of it, you do not understand how it came about, then it becomes an illusion, a hallucination or mere fantasy. It is a complete fallacy to object: Yes, how can the spiritual researcher know that what he discovers is not a hallucination, an illusion, or fantasy? It could be a hallucination that one has suggested to oneself. If the spiritual researcher would place himself in relation to what he experiences as it has been described, as the morbid mind places itself in relation to a hallucination, then this objection would be fully justified. For it presents itself in the mind like an external perception, one does not see through it. But the spiritual researcher gets to know exactly through the right preparations - as you can read in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds?” - that he can distinguish what is only reminiscence of the outside world, and what is imagination and hallucination , to which he remains passive, that he must distinguish this from what presents itself in such a way that he recognizes it in the same way as one is aware of a letter or a word: that which is written on the paper does not mean itself, but something else. For the spiritual researcher does not use what he has seen as one uses hallucinations, but in such a way that one can compare it with a spiritual reading in a writing of imaginations that present themselves. Only when one learns to use in one's mind, in a free way, what one presents there through one's own activity, in such a way that one lives in it as one lives in the writing, through which one sees through to what what they mean; only by rising in such an inwardly strengthened way to that which enters into the vision of the soul can one attain to truly seeing what processes and entities of the spiritual world are. But then, because one gradually becomes familiar with the element of our soul that is not the same as the body, one comes to understand the being of which one can say that the quality of immortality applies to it.

Spiritual science is not a speculative philosophy in which one reflects on the reasons that may arise for the immortality of the soul: spiritual science shows how to arrive at the soul itself and, from this true soul, it shows what it really is. It lays bare, as it were, the soul; and then it turns out that what is laid bare as the soul is not a product of the external body, but that this body is the result of what is discovered there. For when, on the one hand, one discovers within oneself the core of the soul, one senses and experiences that it is the germ of a next earthly life, then one also experiences in this content of consciousness, which lies above the store of memory, what has been drawn into the human being as the human physical body before he began his existence as a physical being at birth or, let us say, at conception. Just as the soul itself spatially prepares its brain when we perceive, so that it reflects its content, so one experiences that the spiritual-soul that one has reached before birth, before was present in a spiritual world and acquired the powers in this world to unite with the physical substance given by father and mother, to permeate this substantiality, to organize itself with it. We experience that the human being, as he enters the world, is not merely the product of father and mother, but that the spiritual unites with the material, with that which is given by father and mother; the spiritual that comes down from spiritual worlds, where it has lived between the last death and this conception. And by getting to know that in the soul which lies beyond memory, the spiritual researcher can also learn to recognize how the soul behaves when the physical, so to speak, no longer holds back the activity of this spiritual-soul, when death has come upon the person. When death has overtaken a person, the soul initially lives – this is the fact that presents itself to spiritual research – in that which has not become physical during life; it lives in its store of memories. In the first period after death, a wide range of memories unfolds before the soul of everything the person has experienced between birth and death. Even all those events come up that have been forgotten during life. This experiencing of all the memories lasts only a few days. The spiritual researcher can see through what is occurring as the first experience after death, because he is, after all, getting to know the nature of memory. When the soul has left the body, the content of consciousness for the spiritual researcher is really something like what it is for the dead person when he has passed through the gate of death. As soon as he is out of the body, the spiritual researcher also experiences everything that his entire thought content is, but now as a world; just as one usually has mountains and clouds and stars and sun and moon and rivers and cities around oneself, so out of the body one has a tableau of what one has experienced; only one can see through this tableau, one can see its effect. By getting used to, to use a trivial expression, really seeing through these things outside the body, one also gradually comes to be able to consciously cast one's gaze on what the soul experiences after death, what it has experienced after the last death, what it faces after the death that will come. At first it is this memory picture that spreads, the thoughts that have accumulated. But behind it, another soul power appears. Now that death has passed, this soul power is no longer inhibited by the body; now it works in such a way that this memory picture disappears from the person's surroundings after a few days.

As I said at the beginning, one comes to daring things when one wants to talk about the subject of today's lecture, but one cannot avoid touching on these things if one does not want to indulge in generalities. I have tried to explain what spiritual research has revealed about the duration of this first experience after death. It has been found that this review of the thought images of the experiences of the last life takes a different amount of time for different people: longer for one person and shorter for another. But in general, it lasts about as long as the strength can last during life, through which the person can stay awake when he is prevented from falling asleep. One person can hardly keep himself awake for one night without being overcome by sleep, while another can for many nights. This inner strength to fight sleep is the measure for the number of days that this remembering back lasts after death. Then it disappears and something else occurs.

What now occurs can only be absorbed if one already knows it through out-of-body experiences; but it is very difficult to find words for these experiences of the soul, which are very different from those experienced in everyday life. Our language is, after all, shaped for the sensual world. What lies outside the sensual world, the soul experiences quite differently than here in the sensual world. Therefore, I ask you to excuse me if some expressions seem awkward or paradoxical to you; but you can be assured that when someone sets out to describe with the very ordinary words of language that for which words are difficult to find, he will not be able to describe directly from the experiences of the soul that which is experienced after the return. What the soul experiences now, what the spiritual researcher experiences outside the body, is what I would like to give the term to, because it is neither feeling nor willing, it is something between feeling and willing. In ordinary life, one does not have this soul power, which one develops inwardly. One recognizes it as a spiritual researcher. It is as if the will moves with us in the world; and as if this will, I would like to say, by moving, carries on its wings or its tides what now comes to us as a feeling in such a way that it is as if it is outside of us, as if it plays on the waves of the will. While we are otherwise accustomed to feeling this feeling as something that is inwardly grown with us, now it becomes like surging and weaving on the waves of the will; and yet we know that in this experience we into the world, that what is out there as willing feeling, as feeling willing, what is out there as the color and tone perceptions of the sense world, is permeated by our being. There is feeling out there that we perceive as light; but at the same time we know we are connected with it.

But in the first period after the review, the person experiences this in such a way that the only world he perceives at first is basically the one from which he emerged, so to speak, at death. After the memory tableau has dawned, this feeling-wanting, wanting-feeling unfolds in the soul; but it expresses only things that are still connected with the last life on earth, so that we can characterize these things that we experience there in something like the following way: Earth life never gives man all that it could give him in his experience. A lot of things remain so that we can say: We have not enjoyed everything that could have been enjoyed, that could have made impressions between birth and death. There is always something left between the lines of life, so to speak, of desires, of wishes, of love for other people and so on. Unfinished business – to use the trivial expression – in the last life, that is what we look back on spiritually with desire, and now we look back spiritually with desire for years. During these years it is so that we have our world mainly in what we have been, so to speak. We look into our last existence on earth and see what remains undone. And only by living in a sphere for years in which nothing can be satisfied as it is satisfied on earth, because we have indeed discarded the bodily organs for it, do we work our way out of such connections with the last life on earth in the soul.

Here too, spiritual science has to survey the length of these experiences, and the following can be said: the time a person lives through in the earliest childhood up to the point where he remembers back, has no influence on the duration of the experiences that have now been described. Likewise, the time that we continue to live through after the age of twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven has no influence. The years from about the age of four into the twenties also indicate the length of time in which one – so connected with one's last life on earth – has to gain experiences in the spiritual world, to withdraw from earthly life. Spiritual observation shows that the time taken to build up the body with the upward striving forces after the previous spiritual life, after going through conception and birth, lasts until the mid-twenties, and that the time taken long it took to imbue life with the physical, organic-fertile forces, to imbue it with the forces that desire and enjoy in life, it takes about the same amount of time to find one's way out of the last earthly life. So that if you turn twelve years old, for example, you may only need five years to emerge from your last life on earth, or seven years; but if you turn fifty, for example, the years after the mid-twenties no longer contribute anything special to the extension of the period just mentioned.

It must be said of this period that it already contains to a certain extent what can be called: the human being perceives spiritual processes and spiritual beings in his environment. I already indicated the day before yesterday that when the spiritual researcher experiences himself in his spiritual and mental self, he is in a real spiritual world. The dead person moves into this spiritual world; but at first he is so busy with his connections with his previous world, in the way we discussed before, that he can only gain a connection with what is in his spiritual surroundings by taking a detour through his earlier life. To give an example: let us assume that someone has passed through the gate of death. The retrospective view is over. He is living in this time of tearing himself away from the contexts of his previous life on earth. Someone he has loved is still in the physical body. The one who is still in this stage of experience, of which we are just speaking, cannot look directly at the soul that is still on earth; but a kind of switchover is formed, as it were: in the last life on earth, we loved the person who has remained behind; we look at the feeling of love when we are in the stage that we are now discussing. Feelings are our outside world. By looking at them, we find the way to the soul that is still on earth. Likewise, we must also find the way to a soul that has already passed through the gate of death through feeling. So one can say: a person lives with human souls as a soul after death, but initially in a roundabout way through his own life.

But more and more a power develops in man, a soul power, which only the spiritual researcher knows when he experiences himself spiritually and soul-wise outside of the body. There is no expression for this. For the other power one can at least say: 'Volitional feeling' or 'feeling volition', because it has something in common with volition and feeling. Even when volition and feeling have become objectified, they still have something in common with the impulses of feeling and will that we otherwise have in life with the things that surge around in volitions and feelings out there. But what the soul now experiences, what awakens in it as a power, the more it moves away in the manner described from the last life on earth, I can only describe with an expression that may sound clumsy in relation to ordinary language, but which is nevertheless indicative. I can only call it: creative soul power, soul creativity. It is something that the soul experiences directly now. That one is absorbed in an activity is something the soul experiences completely; but at the same time, that this creative power really develops, really radiates from the soul into the environment and - again it is clumsy, but it has to be used to make oneself understood, this expression - this power is something that radiates into the environment like a spiritual light, illuminating the spiritual processes and beings all around, so that we see them; just as when the sun rises, we see external objects through the sun, we see spiritual processes and beings through our own inner luminosity, which is poured out. Now the time is approaching when the soul is in the spiritual environment to the extent that this creative power awakens in her to illuminate this world. And here the religions have not used an insignificant expression when they say, to describe life after death: This feeling of being in the creative power, this living in a spiritual environment, which becomes visible when one sends one's own creative power into it, this experiencing of oneself in the outpouring of light is a feeling of bliss. Even the pains are experienced as bliss in this world. There the soul now experiences its further life.

Now it is a matter of the soul only being able to go through this experience in alternating states, which has just been described. I do, however, enter spheres that to the ordinary person are pure fantasy. But according to the preparatory instructions that have now been given, I am also allowed to discuss these things, for it must be clear that the spiritual researcher will never claim anything other than that such things can only be revealed to him when he experiences out of the body. So the soul experiences alternating conditions. It is not always in a state in which it radiates its spiritual luminosity emotionally over its surroundings, so that human souls and other entities are now around it and spiritual processes are experienced by it. It is not always the case that the soul therefore lives in the external spiritual world, but this state must alternate with the state in which the soul feels that this radiance of spiritual luminosity is, as it were, being dampened. The soul becomes inwardly dull, it can no longer radiate its light into the surroundings, it must withdraw into itself. And now comes the moment when, in the meantime between death and a new birth, the soul lives a completely lonely life. This lasts a long time. If you want to compare it to ordinary life, you can say: just as in ordinary life a person has to alternate between sleeping and waking, after death he has to alternate between a life that pours out into the outer world and a life of inner solitude. When everything that was previously experienced in the state of expansion has been taken in, but when the soul knows: you are now completely alone with yourself. Just as one becomes unconscious during sleep, here one withdraws into oneself, but does not become unconscious. The soul experiences a strengthened consciousness precisely in these times of loneliness, but it experiences it in such a way that it knows: out there is the spiritual world, but you are alone with yourself, everything you experience, you experience within yourself. What you experience within yourself are the echoes of what you have experienced outside of yourself. Only through this can the inner luminosity grow stronger again and emerge from the soul once more. And then you wake up spiritually again and experience the other state.

It is one of the most remarkable experiences to really learn to associate a meaning with the words that for the time between death and a new birth the soul lives in spiritual companionship and loneliness, that for this alternation of social experiences and loneliness in the spiritual world, although through much longer periods than day and night, that for this after-death experience it means something similar to sleeping and waking for the physical experience. I have indicated these conditions in my penultimate book: 'The Threshold of the Spiritual World'. But the soul experiences so, by continuing to live between death and a new birth, gradually a down-dumping, a dimming of their luminous power. One would like to say: the experiences of inner loneliness are becoming stronger and stronger. They gradually become so that the person experiences a whole world within, one might say a whole cosmos. Truly, it becomes so that one is justified in saying: the person is overcome by something like a feeling of fear of himself when he discovers what is all down there in the depths of the soul, and what now comes out in the middle of life between death and a new birth.

And then the time comes that I tried to depict in my fourth mystery drama: 'The Awakening of the Soul'. I tried to show this time when a person can only have inner experiences; when the nights of loneliness become longer and longer; when a person can no longer awaken spiritually to a consciousness in which he radiates his luminosity all around. I have tried to express what the person experiences then with a symbolic expression, with the expression: the midnight of spiritual existence between death and a new birth. It is the time when a person experiences everything in the depths of his soul as his world, when he only knows: beyond the shores of your soul are the spiritual worlds, where everything that exists of spiritual beings is, where all human souls are, disembodied or embodied, and where all other beings are; but one only knows it because one has the echoes of it within oneself. And now something arises in the soul that again cannot be described with an ordinary word. Isn't it true that ordinary language has the word 'longing' for the most passive state in the soul. When we are longing in physical experience, we are at our most passive. We long for something, we desire something we do not have – and longing certainly cannot bring about what we long for. We can only behave passively. But the soul forces take on a completely different character when the soul is outside the body. From the depths of loneliness, from what the soul experiences in the manner described in the world midnight of the spirit, the longing arises to live again into the world from which one has been torn in one's loneliness. And now this longing becomes active, and out of it arises something spiritually real, an organizing power. It really becomes a new power of perception. This spiritual longing gives birth to a new soul power, again a power that can now perceive an external world, but a world that is both external and internal: external because it really is outside our being; internal because we look at it as the world we lived through in the previous life, the world of our previous incarnation on earth. This now becomes our outside world through our longing. We look at everything that remained unfinished in the previous life, and our longing builds up forces within us to create balance for what the soul has done in the previous earthly life that was bad, foolish, evil, ugly, in order to create balance for it in a new life.

This is the time when every person can look back on his previous earthly lives, the time when, between death and a new birth, a person is confronted – confronted in his mind – with all the deeds of his previous lives, and the tendency awakens in him to make amends in a new earthly life, to live out the new earthly experiences and make good what was experienced in previous earthly lives. I have met people who said that one life was enough for them; I even met someone who was on the verge of finding something sensible in these repeated lives on earth. But then he wrote me a card from the nearest railway station saying that he didn't want to know about the next life on earth. But the important thing is not that we can form an idea of these repeated lives on earth, but that every soul is able to look back on its previous lives on earth and at the same time absorb the tendency to experience a new life on earth that will make up for its previous ones. And one also experiences that there are people to whom one owes something, or who owe something to one: this appears before the soul as a supplement to one's own life on earth. And the tendency arises to live together again with those people to whom one owes something, in order to make up for what one owes. And the same tendency arises in other people. As a result, forces arise in different people who used to live at the same time; spiritual forces are aroused that tend down to earth. This is why such people, who had been together earlier, come together in the new earth life. What these souls have remained indebted to each other must be settled. As I said, the tendencies come together there. And then one experiences this spiritual life between death and a new birth over and over again: more and more the tendencies I spoke of become apparent and take hold. They become living tendencies. And from what he has experienced in past lives, the person creates the archetype, the spiritual archetype of the new life on earth.

He now creates this himself as time moves on; he now creates what connects with the material substance given by father and mother to enter a new life on earth. And depending on the inherited qualities of the father and mother in the material substance and how closely they are related to the spiritual archetype, the spiritual archetype is drawn to the material substance before conception. So that one can say: the elective affinity between the inherited qualities and the archetype, which decides to which parental couple the soul is magnetically drawn, in which life one finds oneself. In this way the person returns to earth again, unites again with an earthly body. And spiritual research can now see what develops in the child, one might say, in such a mysterious way – anyone who knows how to observe a child's life will see it is so – by the gradual appearance of expressive features from within, by the skillful movements developing from the clumsy ones develop from the clumsy ones, and in that what so visibly works from within models and plasticizes the body; in all this the spiritual researcher sees that which has gone through the experiences between death and a new birth, as we have been talking about, and how it connects more and more with the body – that is what the spiritual researcher sees. Now he understands why initially no memories of these experiences before birth can be present: The forces that could become powers of memory are used up to organize the body. The child would remember everything from before, because it has these powers; but the powers are transformed; just as the pressure forces that I develop when I run my finger over the table are transformed into warmth, so these powers of memory are transformed into organizing forces. What the child organizes internally, what makes the brain plastic so that the child can think later, that it can develop memory powers in the physical body: that is transformed, retrospective power; it disappears in this form, in which it can develop the retrospective view, and organizes the body. And the spiritual that organizes the body is the soul that has been transformed and flows into the body. And so we understand the life we are currently living by understanding what happened outside of life beyond death. What is at work in a person in earthly life has appropriated his powers between death and a new birth. The forces that come to light in a purely spiritual way are the powers of memory, which have been transformed, flowing into the body and organizing it through and through.

Natural scientists will one day discover how the forces that lie purely in heredity are also depleted in the human being at the time when the ability to inherit arises. Certain lower animals die at the same time as they mature for the birth of another being; what powers the human being must develop in order to have physical offspring and to pass something on to them must be concluded by the time they reach sexual maturity; I can only hint at this. Natural science and spiritual science together will be able to provide important insights into this. But in all that works as physical forces in man, spiritual forces are at work. It is the spiritual forces that are active in the physical body in such a way that they permeate this physical body. The physical body is, as it were, the reflection of the spiritual. And basically, it is actually destructive processes that bring about the aforementioned reflection. It is always destructive processes when we see colors, when we hear sounds; even when we form memories, we undergo destructive processes within us. This is the reason for the necessity of sleep, so that the human being does not allow the destructive processes to work alone.

Thus we live, permeating and empowering our body with the forces we acquire outside of the body, and life can only be understood if we consider the spiritual and mental aspects at work in it. Spiritual science is not as fortunate as other sciences in that it can speak of death in plants and animals in the same way as it does in humans. What I have said now applies only to man. In this way spiritual research broadens our view beyond what lies between birth and death. Yes, spiritual research even explains details. I can well imagine that those of you who have a little time for these results of spiritual research would like to hear more details, but I can only give a few examples.

First of all, an example is given that may seem particularly mysterious to the spiritual researcher himself, despite the fact that it sounds paradoxical. This is the existence of criminal natures. It is not true that spiritual research is not at all of the opinion that criminals deserve only compassion and should not be punished. It is not the business of the spiritual researcher to interfere in the external affairs of the world; but to understand what meets us in human life is what the spiritual researcher wants, and he wants it from the depths of the spiritual world. So we ask ourselves: What about a life that manifests itself as criminal? Well, things are easily said, but the answers to such questions must first be wrung from the spiritual researcher, and he must also, in fact, force himself to speak about these things because they seem so utterly paradoxical to the present-day way of thinking. When the criminal is examined, by means of clairvoyance, it turns out that criminal natures are a kind of spiritual premature birth. There is a possibility for every soul to descend from the spiritual worlds and to connect with physical materiality, which is, so to speak, the normal one; but the tendencies that lead to this normal one intersect with other tendencies, so that most people – but criminals especially – descend into earthly life much earlier than would normally be the case. This turns out to be strange. Now that has something else in its wake. To really penetrate with the whole body, to stand in the physicality of the earth as a complete human being, that is only possible if one reincarnates at least approximately at the normal time. But if there are reasons to come down earlier due to previous earthly lives, then one takes something with one that lives in the subconscious, of which one is not at all aware. There is something living in the depths of the soul that makes one take life too lightly, because one did not come down at the time when one could have connected most perfectly with the physical. So one connects only superficially. But one knows nothing about it. It becomes an inner mood of the soul; not to take life fully. And so it may be that in his ordinary consciousness he even has an abnormally developed sense of self-preservation, so that he faces the social world with hostility, develops the strongest egoism, so that he becomes a criminal – and yet in his inner nature, which he does not know, there is a certain superficiality, a carelessness about life, he does not want to place any value on this life. This is caused by a spiritual premature birth. If that is the case, then this life also comes into existence in such a way that the person can fuel the ever-present instinct for self-preservation through what he does not know, which is a taking life lightly, and you see that sprout in the souls of criminals. Only when I knew that this was the case did another thing become clear to me. There is a dictionary of crook language. One can only understand the peculiar nature of the language of crime, this taking of life lightly in the words that come from the subconscious of the soul, when one knows what has been indicated above. But it must be pointed out again and again that in the totality of human lives on earth, what one life breaks is balanced again, so that the criminal, precisely through what he has to experience as a result of his crimes, ascends to other lives on earth in which a balance occurs.

But other things also become understandable when we look at the mysteries of life with spiritual research. We see people who are taken away by misfortune for my sake. Strangely enough, it turns out that when people are killed by an accident at a time when they would not otherwise have left the earth, that is, at a time when the earthly-physical forces are still present; for example, if someone is run over by a locomotive in the thirty-fifth year of their life without seeking death, then the forces in his body that could still have been effective are still present. When one departs from the physical world, these powers do not vanish into nothingness, but one sees how the soul-spiritual, the powers of intelligence, the powers of exact thinking can be strengthened by such an accident, so that such a person can be reborn with stronger powers of intelligence than another who dies a natural death. One must realize that spiritual research, in that it surveys life from a broad horizon, must speak differently about many things than one speaks in ordinary life. Someone who dies at an early stage of life, let us say, through an illness, who undergoes much through this illness, prepares his soul through this illness in such a way that his powers of will can be strengthened. Dying young from illness strengthens the willpower.

Yes, some of it may seem like pure fantasy; but I am also aware – I may as well admit it – that I have a certain responsibility when I discuss these things, and that I would not discuss them if I did not know the means of spiritual research with which these things can be known with the same certainty as the things of the external world can be known. I would consider it the greatest frivolity if these things were said without a knowledge lying in the soul that is imbued with such a mood as has just been indicated.

Thus man's life becomes understandable precisely through that which lies outside the physical life; and as life develops between birth and death, so it is a result of the life that lies beyond birth and death. To some this may appear to be a devaluation of life. So that it does not appear so to the honored listeners, I would like to repeat something very briefly. Someone may say: We are being made aware that what we experience in an earthly life, we have prepared for ourselves. It is true. But if we experience misfortune, we experience it because we have previously implanted the tendency of our soul to enter into this misfortune. Just as the Alpine plant does not thrive in the lowlands but seeks the heights, so the human soul seeks out the situation in which misfortune can befall it; it grows into what it experiences as fate. Just as it is a matter of course for the plant to live in the Alps, so it is a matter of course for the human soul to plunge into misfortune when it absorbs the tendency through insight: only if you overcome this misfortune can you become more perfect in a relationship where you would have to remain more imperfect if misfortune did not happen to you. If someone says: so we are made the smiths of our own misfortune; and if it is said that we should not only bear and endure our misfortune, but in a certain way have even earned it supernaturally: This cannot be a consolation for us! – so, on the other hand, it must be said what I already made clear earlier by means of a comparison: if someone has lived up to the age of eighteen in abundance, without learning anything, out of his father's pocket, and his father then goes bankrupt, then, seen from the outside, it can be a great misfortune when life now lets him down. And he is right to find life unhappy now. But let us assume that he has reached the age of fifty and looks at his life from a different point of view: “If I had not been struck by misfortune, I would not have become what I am now.” For my father it was misfortune, for me it was a developmental catalyst for my life. Thus we are not always in a position to find the right point of view for an accident at the time we experience it. Before birth, we stand on a completely different point of view than afterwards: on the one that what has happened earlier must be experienced in a new life, which creates a balance for what has happened earlier. There we prepare the misfortunes that we later justly endure with suffering ourselves, and which we justly lament because we then consider them only from the point of view of physical-earthly experience.

I would still like to say a little about the time that passes between death and a new birth. The short time of hindsight after death, which only lasts for days, I have already indicated; the time that comes afterwards lasts longer, it lasts for decades. The spiritual researcher comes to it in the following way, how long this time lasts. He must first ask himself, so that he can develop the powers within himself to see something like this: What is it in your soul that, when you experience yourself outside the body, appears to you as something that can be carried by the soul through death? And strangely enough, one experiences that one takes something out of the body, while otherwise one leaves everything behind. As a spiritual researcher, you leave your passions, memories and so on behind when you leave your body; but you take with you your conquests, you take with you what you can only acquire in an earthly life, say, after the age of twenty. People today don't like to hear this, because today people are considered mature even before the age of twenty. You can see that in the newspapers, above and below the line, many people today have not reached the age of twenty. But the truth is that what one experiences through oneself, so that it really becomes accumulated wisdom, happens through having already experienced something and looking back on the earlier experience with a later one. This inward ascent through its conquests, this inward experience of the soul, is what already germinates – so it turns out – what the soul then experiences between death and a new birth. And so the soul must live in a continuous process of such conquests, of transforming its powers. Normally the soul remains in the spiritual world between death and a new birth as long as it has something to transform. From the other side, the following can be said: We live in a certain time; we absorb this or that, experience this or that by belonging to this or that tribe. Having gone through death, we have formed our life experiences from this. But the earth is changing. Not only are the physical conditions changing. Let the honored listeners think back to the time around the founding of Christianity when the areas here, where Vienna now lies, have changed. But in even shorter periods of time, the cultural face of the earth, the spiritual content of our surroundings, from which we draw our memory, our store of memories, is changing. Now the soul does not normally return to a new life on earth until it can enter a completely new spiritual environment. It turns out that the soul is not reborn without reason, but so that it can experience new things. To do that, it has to change everything it experienced in the previous life, for example, the ability to express itself in a particular language. This must be transformed; it must acquire another language ability. So that is the time. It usually lasts from one to one and a half millennia. But as I said, spiritual premature births can occur due to certain circumstances.

Time is pressing; I cannot go into the description of the special circumstances any further. I would just like to say this: that those of the esteemed listeners who might go home with the feeling, 'Yes, none of this is really credible; how can a person possibly know about this!' — may be mindful of what I mentioned at the beginning, that in fact later self-evident truths — insights that have penetrated into all souls — first communicated themselves to earthly culture as paradoxical. And anyone who wants to cultivate spiritual science today must already familiarize themselves with how understandable it is that what is so certain to become established in the minds of people as the Copernican world view has done, after it was first regarded as fantasy, even as something harmful, by many. But once more I may draw attention to the picture that presents itself to the spiritual researcher and to the one who is able to understand spiritual science in the sense mentioned the day before yesterday, in order to give him the strong awareness of the truth that will gradually assert itself. Even if it has to force its way through the narrowest crevices, so that it is pressed down by the heaviest masses of prejudice, it will still force its way through. This consciousness is strengthened when we look at Giordano Bruno; here we have a picture of someone who, by saying: ” People believed that when they looked up into the vast space above, the blue vault of heaven spread out; the sun and planets orbited it, and the blue vault of heaven is a wall, a blue wall! At that time Giordano Bruno could say: This wall only appears to you because your perceptive faculty only reaches up to it. You build this boundary yourselves; it is not there at all. Infinities of space spread out. And infinities of space are filled with infinite worlds.

Today, the spiritual researcher must consider this expansion of the human gaze into the infinities of space; he must consider how Giordano Bruno first pointed out that the boundaries of space in the vault of heaven are only created by the limitations of human perception itself; he must point out that there is also such a firmament for the time of human experience. By surveying human life with the physical organs of perception and the mind, one sees these limits, the limits of birth and death, as one once saw the limit of space in the blue vault of heaven, but which in reality does not exist. So too the limit of the time of human experience between birth, or let us say conception and death, is only posited by the limitedness of the human faculty of perception. And beyond birth or conception and death, temporal infinity expands, and embedded in this temporal infinity are the backward and forward repetitions of human life on earth and those lives that flow between death and a new birth. I cannot, however, go into detail about the fact that all these repetitions once had a beginning, that man was born out of the spiritual and found his dwelling place here – at that time the earth itself arose out of the spiritual world – and that man, after he has gone through the earthly repetitions, when the earth itself detaches itself from human souls, then man passes over into another, again spiritualized life. This can only be hinted at here; more exact details will be found in my Secret Science.

Even if the insights of spiritual science are in contradiction to the thinking of the present time in the way indicated, it must still be said that in the intuitions of those who were the leaders of humanity - I closed the same reflection the day before yesterday - one nevertheless finds what is being revived in spiritual science today. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, has not been had by men; for it is a child of our time, and will arise out of the education of our time; but those who knew themselves united in soul with the spirit of the universe, which surges and weaves in all men, they shaped the words into that to which spiritual science can say 'Yes' in the full sense. Spiritual science shows us how to understand life between birth and death by showing us that in this physical body, in all of physical life, what is immortal, what can also live in a spiritual world, is at work and weaving. Spiritual science shows us that we have life in the body through the life outside the body, so that no one can understand the life between birth and death who does not understand the life outside the body, in the spiritual firmament. Goethe expresses this with the words – intuitively sensing the later insights of spiritual science – with words that not only clearly state Goethe's belief in an immortal life, but also express how he knew that the real value in realization of present life, in the experience of earthly existence, depends on one's glowing through, illuminating through, permeating through this earthly existence with knowledge of that which is extrinsic, supernal, and immortal. Therefore, it is precisely this realization of spiritual science, that a true inner essence of the mortal is recognized by the immortal, as summarized in a feeling in the words in which Goethe once expressed his conviction: “To those who, out of the peculiar essence of their present life, do not want to form an opinion about another life, to them I would like to say with Goethe: ‘I would not want to miss out on the happiness of believing in a future continuation; yes, I would like to say with Lorenzo de Medici: ’I would not want to miss out on the happiness of believing in a future continuation; yes, I would like to say with Lorenzo de Medici: ‘I would not want to miss out on the happiness of believing in a future continuation; yes, I would like to say with Lorenzo de Medici: ’I would not want to miss out on the happiness of believing in a future continuation; yes, I would like to say with Lorenzo de Medici: 'I would not want to miss out on the happiness of believing present life, to those I would say with Goethe: “I would not for the world renounce the good fortune of believing in a future life; nay, I would say with Lorenzo de' Medici that all those are dead even to this life who have no hope of another.”

Before I come to the lecture itself today, I would like to address a few words to you, which are only intended to say that this year, unfortunately, unlike in previous years, we will not be holding the events that would otherwise have taken place in Munich in the middle of summer, because the next such event is to take place in the Johannesbau and this building is taking a little longer than originally thought. It is to be hoped that in the last two months of this year we shall have made sufficient progress for the Johannesbau to be opened with appropriate ceremonies.

This construction project is, of course, giving us more work than one would usually imagine, and you will therefore understand that personal meetings have had to be canceled for a certain period of time.

For our dear Austrian friends, it has certainly not been easy in many respects to come to terms with the idea that the Johannesbau is so far away. However, although I am not in a position to discuss it further, because there is not enough time, the fact is that karma led us to build the Johannesbau where it is being built; and that will be good.

We must realize that we see this building as a kind of central place and symbol of our spiritual movement. What is far for one person is near for another; there was no way around that from the outset. But it is to be hoped that our Austrian friends will also find ways and means to experience this emblem of our anthroposophical movement as their own, I would like to say explicitly, by being personally present at the appropriate event of the Johannesbau. In reality, it is not only a symbol because of what it will become as a monumental building, but it is, in a sense, a symbol because, if it really comes about, it can only come about through the great willingness to make sacrifices on the part of some of our friends, who have really shown the utmost willingness to make sacrifices in order to complete the difficult and, above all, costly construction, as it is now to be.

What is to be created should actually express in every respect what our spiritual movement will be. And the whole architectural style must correspond to this. Everything that flows into the building must be such that it does not enter in a symbolic or allegorical way, but must flow into this building in a truly artistic way. Above all, it was necessary to build a structure that is an embodiment of the spiritual essence to which we are devoted in all its forms. The different periods and cultures of human development also had their own corresponding buildings. The building to be erected in Dornach should show in all its forms, from which it is composed and with which it is to form a shell for our spiritual work, through the way this shell opens outwards and inwards and closes and joins together, that something is expressed in its forms that has never before been conceived in architecture for such a building.

Just as the Greek temple stands as a dwelling for the god within, just as the Gothic cathedral stands to form a whole together with the community gathered within, so our building should be designed in such a way that the forms directly, I would say in a spiritual, intellectual relationship, shape the building so that it is spiritually transparent. That means that when you are inside the building, you will have the feeling, through the architecture and through that which passes from the architecture into the sculpture, that these walls are not like other architectural walls that have existed up to now, closed, merely enclosing, but that they are at the same time the communicators that open up spiritual life into infinite spiritual expanses. These are walls that simultaneously transcend themselves through their forms, that at the same time are not present in their physical form. The aim is for everyone who is inside and gradually gets used to these forms, not allegorically and symbolically, but in a living sensation, to have something like a view of the world we are talking about, simply by experiencing the form.

Of course, this is something completely new in architecture, something unusual; and it takes time and work, and as it is already in our time – forgive the harsh expression – it also needs and has needed: money! And in this matter the willingness to make sacrifices on the part of some of our friends was so accommodating that we can say: this willingness to make sacrifices is, in a certain respect, a symbol of the way in which our spiritual movement has penetrated the understanding of souls.

I only wished to mention this, so that you may take this structure to your hearts, and feel it as a central point of our movement, so that you may think of yourselves as united with it, and may grant it your personal presence, as much as will be possible in the future, after the opening.

Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, revised

Anyone who speaks today about super-sensible worlds lays himself open at once to the quite understandable criticism that he is violating one of the most important demands of the age. This is the demand that the most important questions of existence be seriously discussed from a scientific point of view only in such a way that science recognizes its own limitations, having clear insight into the fact that it must restrict itself to the physical world of earthly existence and would undoubtedly become a degenerate fantasy if it were to go beyond these limits. Now, precisely the type of spiritual scientific perception about which I spoke at the last Vienna Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement (and shall speak again today), lays claim not only to being free from hostility toward scientific thinking and the scientific sense of responsibility of our times, but also to working in complete harmony with the most conscientious scientific demands of those very persons who stand on the ground of the most rigorous natural science. It is possible, however, to speak from various points of view regarding the scientific demands of the times that are imposed on us by the theoretical and practical results in the evolution of humanity, which have emerged in such a splendid way in the course of the last three or four centuries, but especially during the nineteenth century. Therefore, I shall speak today about super-sensible knowledge in so far as it tends to fulfill precisely this demand, and I wish to speak in another lecture about the super-sensible knowledge of the human being as a demand of the human heart, of human feeling, during the present age.

We can observe the magnificent contribution which scientific research has brought us even up to the most recent time—the magnificent contribution in the findings about relationships throughout the external world. But it is possible to speak in a different sense regarding the achievements which have come about precisely in connection with this current of human evolution. For instance, we may call attention to the fact that, through the conscientious, earnest observation of the laws and facts of the external world of the senses, as is supplied by natural science, very special human capacities have been developed, and that just such observation and experimentation have thrown a light also upon human capacities themselves. But I should like to say that many persons holding positions deserving the greatest respect in the sphere of scientific research are willing to give very little attention to this light which has been reflected upon man himself through his own researches.

If we only give a little thought to what this light has illuminated, we see that human thinking, through the very fact that it has been able to investigate both narrow and vast relationships—the microscopic and the telescopic—has gained immeasurably in itself: has gained in the capacity of discrimination, has gained in power of penetration, to associate the things in the world so that their secrets are unveiled, and to determine the laws underlying cosmic relationships, and so forth. We see, as this thinking develops, that a standard is set for this thinking, and it is set precisely for the most earnest of those who take up this research: the demand that this thinking must develop as selflessly as possible in the observation of external nature and in experimentation in the laboratory, in the clinic, etc. And the human being has achieved tremendous power in this respect. He has succeeded in setting up more and more rules whose character prevents anything of the nature of inner wishes of the heart, of opinions, perhaps even of fantasies regarding one's own being such as arise in the course of thinking, from being carried over into what he is to establish by means of the microscope and the telescope, the measuring rule and the scales, regarding the relationships of life and existence.

Under these influences a type of thinking has gradually developed about which one must say that it has worked out its passive role with a certain inner diligence. Thinking in connection with observation, with experiment, has nowadays become completely abstract—so abstract that it does not trust itself to conjure anything of the nature of knowledge or of truth from its own inner being.

It is this gradually developed characteristic of thinking which demands before everything else—and above all it seems—the rejection of all that the human being is in himself by reason of his inner nature. For what he himself is must be set forth in activity; this can really never exist wholly apart from the impulse of his will. Thus we have arrived at the point—and we have rightly reached this point in the field of external research—of actually rejecting the activity of thinking, although we became aware in this activity of what we ourselves mean as human beings in the universe, in the totality of cosmic relationships. In a certain sense, the human being has eliminated himself in connection with his research; he prohibits his own inner activity. We shall see immediately that what is rightly prohibited in connection with this external research must be especially cultivated in relationship to man's own self if he wishes to gain enlightenment about the spiritual, about the super-sensible element of his own being.

But a second element in the nature of man has been obliged to manifest its particular side in modern research, a side which is alien to humanity even though friendly to the world: that is, the human life of sentiment, the human life of feeling. In modern research, human feeling is not permitted to participate; the human being must remain cold and matter-of-fact. Yet one might ask whether it were possible to acquire within this human feeling forces useful in gaining knowledge of the world. One can say, on the one hand, that inner human caprice plays a role in feelings, in human subjectivity, and that feeling is the source of fantasy. On the other hand, one can reply that human feeling can certainly play no distinct role as it exists chiefly in everyday and in scientific life. Yet, if we recall—as science itself must describe it to us—that the human senses have not always, in the course of human evolution, been such as they are today, but have developed from a relatively imperfect stage up to their present state, if we recall that they certainly did not express themselves in earlier periods as objectively about things as they do today, an inkling may then dawn in us that there may exist, even within the life of subjective feeling, something that might evolve just as did the human senses themselves, and which might be led from an experience of man's own being over to a comprehension of cosmic relationships in a higher sense. Precisely as we observe the withdrawal of human feeling in connection with contemporary research must the question be raised: could not some higher sense unfold within feeling itself, if feeling were particularly developed?

But we find eminently clear in a third element in the being of man how we are impelled from an altogether praiseworthy scientific view to something different: this is the will aspect of the life of the soul. Whoever is at home in scientific thinking knows how impossible it is for such thinking to grasp the relationships of the world other than through causal necessity. We link in the most rigid manner phenomena existing side by side in space; we link in the strictest sense phenomena occurring one after another in time. That is, we relate cause and effect according to their inflexible laws. Whoever speaks, not as a dilettante, but as one thoroughly at home in science, knows what a tremendous power is exerted by the mere consideration of the realms of scientific fact in this manner. He knows how he is captivated by this idea of a universal causality and how he cannot do otherwise than to subject everything that he confronts in his thinking to this idea of causality.

But there is human will, this human will which says to us in every moment of our waking life of day: “What you undertake in a certain sense by reason of yourself, by reason of your will, is not causally determined in the same sense that applies to any sort of external phenomena of nature.” For this reason, even a person who simply feels in a natural way about himself, who looks into himself in observation free from preconception, can scarcely do otherwise than also to ascribe to himself, on the basis of immediate experience, freedom of will. But when he turns his glance to scientific thinking, he cannot admit this freedom of will. This is one of the conflicts into which we are brought by the condition of the present age. In the course of our lectures we shall learn much more about the conflicts. But for one who is able to feel this conflict in its full intensity, who can feel it through and through—because he must be honest on the one side concerning scientific research, and on the other side concerning his self-observation—the conflict is something utterly confounding, so confounding that it may drive him to doubt whether there is anywhere in life a firm basis from which one may search for truth.

We must deal with such conflicts from the right human perspective. We must be able to say to ourselves that research drives us to the point where we are actually unable to admit what we are everyday aware of: that something else must somehow exist which offers another approach to the world than that which is offered to us in irrefutable manner in the external order of nature. Through the very fact that we are so forcibly driven into such conflicts by the order of nature itself, it becomes for human beings of the present time a necessity to admit the impossibility of speaking about the super-sensible worlds as they have been spoken about until a relatively recent time. We need go back only to the first half of the nineteenth century to discover individuals who, by reason of a consciousness in harmony with the period, were thoroughly serious in their scientific work, and yet who called attention to the super-sensible aspect of human life, to that aspect which opens up to the human being a view of the divine, of his own immortality; and in this connection they always called attention to what we may at present designate as the “night aspects” of human life. Men deserving of the very highest regard have called attention to that wonderful but very problematical world into which the human being is transferred every night: to the dream world. They have called attention to many mysterious relationships which exist between this chaotic picture-world of dreams and the world of actuality. They have called attention to the fact that the inner nature of the human organization, especially in illness, reflects itself in the fantastic pictures of dreams, and how healthy human life enters into the chaotic experiences of dreams in the forms of signs and symbols. They pointed out that much which cannot be surveyed by the human being with his waking senses finds its place in the half-awake state of the soul, and out of such matters conclusions were drawn. These matters border upon the subject that many people still study today, the “subconscious” states of the life of the human soul, which manifest themselves in a similar way.

But everything which appears before the human being in this form, which could still give a certain satisfaction to an earlier humanity, is no longer valid for us. It is no longer valid for us because our way of looking into external nature has become something different. Here we have to look back to the times when there existed still only a mystically colored astrology. Man then looked into the world of the senses in such a way that his perception was far removed from the exactness which we demand of science today. Because he did not demand of himself in his sense life that complete clarity which we possess today, he could discover in a mystical, half-conscious state something from which he could draw inferences. This we cannot do today. Just as little as we are able to derive today, from what natural science gives us directly, anything other than questions regarding the true nature of man, just so little can we afford to remain at a standstill at the point reached by natural science and expect to satisfy our super-sensible needs in a manner similar to that of earlier times.

That form of super-sensible knowledge of which I shall speak here has an insight into this demand of our times. It observes what has become of thinking, feeling, and willing in man precisely through natural science, and it asks, on the other side, whether it may be possible by reason of the very achievements of contemporary humanity in thinking, feeling, and willing to penetrate further into the super-sensible realm with the same clarity which holds sway in the scientific realm. This cannot be achieved by means of inferential reasoning, by means of logic; for natural science justly points out its limitations with reference to its own nature. But something else can occur: the inner human capacities may evolve further, beyond the point at which they stand when we are in the realm of ordinary scientific research, so that we now apply to the development of our own spiritual capacities the same exactness which we are accustomed to applying to research in the laboratory and the clinic. I shall discuss this first in connection with thinking itself.

Thinking, which has become more and more conscious of its passive role in connection with external research, and is not willing to disavow this, is capable of energizing itself inwardly to activity. It may energize itself in such a way that, although not exact in the sense in which we apply this term to measure and weight in external research, it is exact in relationship to its own development in the sense in which the external scientist, the mathematician, for example, is accustomed to follow with full consciousness every step in his research. But this occurs when that mode of super-sensible cognition of which I am here speaking replaces the ancient vague meditation, the ancient indistinct immersion of oneself in thinking, with a truly exact development of this thinking. It is possible here to indicate only the general principles of what I have said regarding such an exact development of thinking in my books, Occult Science, an Outline, Knowledge of the Higher Words and Its Attainment, and other books. The human being should really compel himself, for the length of time which is necessary for him—and this is determined by the varying innate capacities of people—to exchange the role of passive surrender to the external world, which he otherwise rightly assumes in his thinking, for that different role: that of introducing into this thinking his whole inner activity of soul. This he should do by taking into his mind day by day, even though at times only for a brief period, some particular thought—the content of which is not the important matter—and, while withdrawing his inner nature from the external world, directing all the powers of his soul in inner concentration upon this thought. By means of this process something comes about in the development of those capacities of soul that may be compared with the results which follow when any particular muscles of the human body—for instance, the muscles of the arms—are to be developed. The muscles are made stronger, more powerful through use, through exercise. Thus, likewise, do the capacities of the soul become inwardly stronger, more powerful by being directed upon a definite thought. This exercise must be arranged so that we proceed in a really exact way, so that we survey every step taken in our thinking just as a mathematician surveys his operations when he undertakes to solve a geometrical or arithmetical problem. This can be done in the greatest variety of ways. When I say that something should be selected for this content of concentration that one finds in any sort of book—even some worthless old volume that we know quite certainly we have never previously seen—this may seem trivial. The important point is not the content of truth in the thing, but the fact that we survey such a thought content completely. This cannot be done if we take a thought content out of our own memory; for so much is associated with such a thought in the most indeterminate way, so much plays a role in the subconscious or the unconscious, and it is not possible to be exact if one concentrates upon such a thing. What one fixes, therefore, in the very center of one's consciousness is something entirely new, something that one confronts only with respect to its actual content, which is not associated with any experience of the soul. What matters is the concentration of the forces of the soul and the strengthening which results from this. Likewise, if one goes to a person who has made some progress in this field and requests him to provide one with such a thought content, it is good not to entertain a prejudice against this. The content is in that case entirely new to the person concerned, and he can survey it. Many persons fear that they may become dependent in this way upon someone else who provides them with such a content. But this is not the case; in reality, they become less dependent than if they take such a thought content out of their own memories and experiences, in which case it is bound up with all sorts of subconscious experiences. Moreover, it is good for a person who has had some practice in scientific work to use the findings of scientific research as material for concentration; these prove to be, indeed, the most fruitful of all for this purpose.

If this is continued for a relatively long time, even for years, perhaps—and this must be accompanied by patience and endurance, as it requires a few weeks or months in some cases before success is achieved, and in some cases years—it is possible to arrive at a point where this method for the inner molding of one's thoughts can be applied as exactly as the physicist or the chemist applies the methods of measuring and weighing for the purpose of discovering the secrets of nature. What one has then learned is applied to the further development of one's own thinking. At a certain moment, then, the person has a significant inner experience: he feels himself to be involved not only in picture-thinking, which depicts the external events and facts and which is true to reality in inverse proportion to the force it possesses in itself, in proportion as it is a mere picture; but one arrives now at the point of adding to this kind of thinking the inner experience of a thinking in which one lives, a thinking filled with inner power. This is a significant experience. Thinking thus becomes, as it were, something which one begins to experience just as one experiences the power of one's own muscles when one grasps an object or strikes against something. A reality such as one experiences otherwise only in connection with the process of breathing or the activity of a muscle—this inner activity now enters into thinking. And since one has investigated precisely every step upon this way, so one experiences oneself in full clarity and presence of mind in this strengthened, active thinking. If the objection is raised, let us say, that knowledge can result only from observation and logic, this is no real objection; for what we now experience is experienced with complete inner clarity, and yet in such a way that this thinking becomes at the same time a kind of “touching with the soul.” In the process of forming a thought, it is as if we were extending a feeler—not, in this case, as the snail extends a feeler into the physical world, but as if a feeler were extended into a spiritual world, which is as yet present only for our feelings if we have developed to this stage, but which we are justified in expecting. For one has the feeling: “Your thinking has been transformed into a spiritual touching; if this can become more and more the case, you may expect that this thinking will come into contact with what constitutes a spiritual reality, just as your finger here in the physical world comes into contact with what is physically real.”

Only when one has lived for a time in this inwardly strengthened thinking does complete self-knowledge become possible. For we know then that the soul element has become, by means of this concentration, an experiential reality.

It is possible then for the person concerned to go forward in his exercises and to arrive at the point where he can, in turn, eliminate this soul content, put it away; he can, in a certain sense, render his consciousness void of what he himself has brought into this consciousness, this thought content upon which he has concentrated, and which has enabled him to possess a real thinking constituting a sense of touch for the soul. It is rather easy in ordinary life to acquire an empty consciousness; we need only fall asleep. But it requires an intense application of force, after we have become accustomed to concentrating upon a definite thought content, to put away such a content of thought in connection with this very strengthened thinking, thinking which has become a reality. Yet we succeed in putting aside this content of thinking in exactly the same way in which we acquired at first the powerful force needed for concentration. When we have succeeded in this, something appears before the soul which has been possible previously only in the form of pictures of episodes in one's memory: the whole inner life of the person appears in a new way before the eyes of his soul, as he has passed through this life in his earthly existence since birth, or since the earliest point of time to which one's memory can return, at which point one entered consciously into this earthly existence. Ordinarily, the only thing we know in regard to this earthly existence is that which we can call up in memory; we have pictures of our experiences. But what is now experienced by means of this strengthened thinking is not of the same kind. It appears as if in a tremendous tableau so that we do not recollect merely in a dim picture what we passed through ten years ago, for instance, but we have the inner experience that in spirit we are retracing the course of time. If someone carries out such an exercise in his fiftieth year, let us say, and arrives at the result indicated, what then happens is that time permits him to go back as if along a “time-path” all the way, for instance, to the experiences of his thirty-fifth year. We travel back through time. We do not have only a dim memory of what we passed through fifteen years earlier, but we feel ourselves to be in the midst of this in its living reality, as if in an experience of the present moment. We travel through time; space loses its significance, and time affords us a mighty tableau of memory. This becomes a precise picture of man's life, such as appears, even according to scientific thinkers, when anyone is exposed to great terror, a severe shock—at the moment of drowning, for instance—when for some moments he is confronted by something of his entire earthly life in pictures appearing before his soul—to which he looks back later with a certain shuddering fascination. In other words, what appears before the soul in such cases as through a natural convulsion now actually appears before the soul at the moment indicated, when the entire earthly life confronts one as in a mighty tableau of the spirit, only in a time order. Only now does one know oneself; only now does one possess real self-observation.

It is quite possible to differentiate this picture of man's inner being from that which constitutes a mere “memory” picture. It is clear in the memory picture that we have something in which persons, natural occurrences, or works of art come upon us as if from without; in this memory picture what we have is the manner in which the world comes into contact with us. In the super-sensible memory tableau which appears before a person, what confronts him is, rather, that which has proceeded from himself. If, for instance, at a certain definite point of time in his life he began a friendship with a beloved personality, the mere memory picture shows how this person came to him at a certain point of time, spoke to him, what he owes to the person, and so on. But in this life tableau what confronts him is the manner in which he himself longed for this person, and how he ultimately took every step in such a way that he was inevitably led to that being whom he recognized as being in harmony with himself.

That which has taken place through the unfolding of the forces of the soul comes to meet one with exact clarity in this life tableau. Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them to enlightenment regarding much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even if this being of oneself meets the searching eye with reproach. This state of cognition I have called imaginative knowledge, or Imagination.

But one can progress beyond this stage. In that which we come to know through this memory tableau, we are confronted by those forces which have really formed us as human beings. One knows now: “Within you those forces evolve which mold the substances of your physical body. Within you, especially during childhood, those forces have evolved which, approximately up to the seventh year, have plastically modeled the nerve masses of the brain, which did not yet exist in well-ordered form after your birth.” We then cease at last to ascribe what works formatively upon the human being to those forces which inhere in material substances. We cease to do this when we have this memory tableau before us, when we see how into all the forces of nutrition and of breathing and into the whole circulation of the blood stream the contents of this memory tableau—which are forces in themselves, forces without which no single wave of the blood circulates and no single process of breathing occurs. We now learn to understand that man himself in his inner being consists of spirit and soul.

What now dawns upon one can best be described by a comparison. Imagine that you have walked for a certain distance over ground which has been softened by rain, and that you have noticed all the way tracks or ruts made by human feet or wagon wheels. Now suppose that a being came from the moon and saw this condition of the ground, but saw no human being. He would probably conclude that there must be all sorts of forces underneath the earth which have thrust up these traces and given this form to the surface of the ground. Such a being might seek within the earth for the forces which have produced the tracks. But one who sees through the matter knows that the condition was not caused by the earth but by human feet or wagon wheels.

Now, anyone who possesses a view of things such as I have just described does not at all look, for this reason, with less reverence, for example, upon the convolutions of the human brain. Yet, just as he knows that those tracks on the surface of the earth do not derive from forces within the earth, he now knows that these convolutions of the brain do not derive from forces within the substance of the brain, but that the spiritual-psychic entity of man is there, which he himself has now beheld, and that it works in such a way that our brain has these convolutions. This is the essential thing—to be driven to this view, so that we arrive at a conception of our own spirit-soul nature, so that the eye of the soul is really directed to the soul-spiritual element and to its manifestations in the external life.

But it is possible to progress still further. After we strengthen our inner being through concentrating upon a definite thought content; and after we then empty our consciousness so that, instead of the images we ourselves have formed, the content of our life appears before us; now we can put this memory tableau out of our consciousness, just as we previously eliminated a single concept, so that our consciousness is empty of this. We can now learn to apply this powerful force to efface from our consciousness that which we have come to know through a heightened self-observation as a spirit-soul being. In doing this, efface nothing less than the inner being of our own soul life. We learned first in concentration to efface what is external, and we then learned to direct the gaze of our soul to our own spirit-soul entity, and this completely occupied the whole tableau of memory. If we now succeed in effacing this memory tableau itself, there comes about what I wish to designate as the truly empty consciousness. We have previously lived in the memory tableau or in what we ourselves have set up before our minds, but now something entirely different appears. That which lived within us we have now suppressed, and we confront the world with an empty consciousness. This signifies something extraordinary in the experience of the soul. Fundamentally speaking, I can describe at first only by means of a comparison what now appears to the soul, when the content of our own soul is effaced by means of the powerful inner force we apply. We need only think of the fact that, when the impressions of the external senses gradually die away, when there is a cessation of seeing, hearing, perhaps even of a distinct sense of touch, we sink into a state closely resembling the state of sleep. Now, however, when we efface the content of our own souls, we come to an empty state of consciousness, although this is not a state of sleep. We reach what I might call the state of being merely awake—that is, of being awake with an empty consciousness.

We may, perhaps, conceive this empty consciousness in the following way: imagine a modern city with all its noise and din. We may withdraw from the city, and everything becomes more and more quiet around us; but we finally arrive, perhaps deep within a forest. Here we find the absolute opposite of the noises of the city. We live in complete inner stillness, in hushed peace. If, now, I undertake to describe what follows, I must resort to a trivial comparison. We must raise the question whether this peace, this stillness, can be changed still further into something else. We may designate this stillness as the zero point in our perception of the external world. If we possess a certain amount of property and we subtract from this property, it is diminished; as we take away still more, it is further diminished; and we finally arrive at zero and have nothing left. Can we then proceed still further? It may, perhaps, be undesirable to most persons, but the fact is that many do this: they decrease their possessions further by incurring debt. One then has less than zero, and one can still diminish what one has. In precisely the same way, we may at least imagine that the stillness, which is like the zero point of being awake, may be pushed beyond this zero into a sort of negative state. A super-stillness, a super-peace may augment the quietness. This is what is experienced by one who blots out his own soul content: he enters into a state of quietness of soul which lies below the zero point. An inner stillness of soul in the most intensified degree comes about during the state of wakefulness.

This cannot be attained without being accompanied by something else. This can be attained only when we feel that a certain state, linked with the picture images of our own self, passes over into another state. One who senses, who contemplates the first stage of the super-sensible within himself, is in a certain state of well-being, that well-being and inner blissfulness to which the various religious creeds refer when they call attention to the super-sensible and at the same time remind the human being that the super-sensible brings to him the experience of a certain blissfulness in his inner being. Indeed, up to the point where one excluded one's own inner self, there was a certain sense of well-being, an intensified feeling of blissfulness. At that moment, however, when the stillness of soul comes about, this inner well-being is replaced completely by inner pain, inner deprivation, such as we have never known before—the sense that one is separated from all to which one is united in the earthly life, far removed not only from the feeling of one's own body but from the feeling of one's own experiences since birth. And this means a deprivation which increases to a frightful pain of soul. Many shrink back from this stage; they cannot find the courage to make the crossing from a certain lower clairvoyance, after eliminating their own content of soul, to the state of consciousness where resides that inner stillness. But if we pass into this stage in full consciousness there begins to enter, in place of Imagination, that which I have called, in the books previously mentioned, Inspiration—I trust you will not take offense at these terms—the experience of a real spiritual world. After one has previously eliminated the world of the senses and established an empty consciousness, accompanied by inexpressible pain of soul, then the outer spiritual world comes to meet us. In the state of Inspiration we become aware of the fact that the human being is surrounded by a spiritual world just as the sense world exists for his outer senses.

And the first thing, in turn, that we behold in this spiritual world is our own pre-earthly existence. Just as we are otherwise conscious of earthly experiences by means of our ordinary memory, so does a cosmic memory now dawn for us: we look back into pre-earthly experiences, beholding what we were as spirit-soul beings in a purely spiritual world before we descended through birth to this earthly existence, when as spiritual beings we participated in the molding of our own bodies. So do we look back upon the spiritual, the eternal, in the nature of man, to that which reveals itself to us as the pre-earthly existence, which we now know is not dependent upon the birth and death of the physical body, for it is that which existed before birth and before conception which made a human being out of this physical body derived from matter and heredity. Now for the first time one reaches a true concept also of physical heredity, since one sees what super-sensible forces play into this—forces which we acquire out of a purely spiritual world, with which we now feel united just as we feel united with the physical world in the earthly life. Moreover, we now become aware that, in spite of the great advances registered in the evolution of humanity, much has been lost which belonged inherently to more ancient instinctive conceptions that we can no longer make use of today. The instinctive super-sensible vision of humanity of earlier ages was confronted by this pre-earthly life as well as human immortality, regarding which we shall speak a little later. For eternity was conceived in ancient times in such a way that one grasped both its aspects. We speak nowadays of the immortality of the human soul—indeed, our language itself possesses only this word—but people once spoke, and the more ancient languages continue to show such words, of unborn-ness (Ungeborenheit) as the other aspect of the eternity of the human soul. Now, however, the times have somewhat changed. People are interested in the question of what becomes of the human soul after death, because this is something still to come; but as to the other question, what existed before birth, before conception, there is less interest because that has “passed,” and yet we are here. But a true knowledge of human immortality can arise only when we consider eternity in both its aspects: that of immortality and that of unborn-ness.

But, for the very purpose of maintaining a connection with the latter, and especially in an exact clairvoyance, still a third thing is necessary. We sense ourselves truly as human beings when we no longer permit our feelings to be completely absorbed within the earthly life. For that which we now come to know as our pre-earthly life penetrates into us in pictures and is added to what we previously sensed as our humanity, making us for the first time completely human. Our feelings are then, as it were, shot through with inner light, and we know that we have now developed our feeling into a sense organ for the spiritual. But we must go further and must be able to make our will element into an organ of knowledge for the spiritual.

For this purpose, something must begin to play a role in human knowledge which, very rightly, is not otherwise considered as a means of knowledge by those who desire to be taken seriously in the realm of cognition. We first become aware that this is a means of knowledge when we enter the super-sensible realms. This is the force of love. Only, we must begin to develop this force of love in a higher sense than that in which nature has bestowed love upon us, with all its significance for the life of nature and of man. It may seem paradoxical what I must describe as the first steps in the unfolding of a higher love in the life of man.

When you try, with full discretion for each step, to perceive the world in a certain other consciousness than one usually feels, then you come to the higher love. Suppose you undertake in the evening, before you go to sleep, to bring your day's life into your consciousness so that you begin with the last occurrence of the evening, visualizing it as precisely as possible, then visualizing in the same way the next preceding, then the third from the last, thus moving backward to the morning in this survey of the life of the day; this is a process in which much more importance attaches to the inner energy expended than to the question whether one visualizes each individual occurrence more or less precisely. What is important is this reversal of the order of visualization. Ordinarily we view events in such a way that we first consider the earlier and then the subsequent in a consecutive chain. Through such an exercise as I have just described to you, we reverse the whole life; we think and feel in a direction opposite to the course of the day. We can practice this on the experiences of our day, as I have suggested, and this requires only a few minutes. But we can do this also in a different way. Undertake to visualize the course of a drama in such a way that you begin with the fifth act and picture it advancing forwards through the fourth, third, toward the beginning. Or we may place before ourselves a melody in the reverse succession of tones. If we pass through more and more such inner experiences of the soul in this way, we shall discover that the inner experience is freed from the external course of nature, and that we actually become more and more self-directing. But, even though we become in this way more and more individualized and achieve an ever-increasing power of self-direction, we learn also to give attention to the external life in more complete consciousness. For only now do we become aware that, the more powerfully we develop through practice this fully conscious absorption in another being, the higher becomes the degree of our selflessness, and the greater must our love become in compensation. In this way we feel how this experience of not living in oneself but living in another being, this passing over from one's own being to another, becomes more and more powerful. We then reach the stage where, to Imagination and Inspiration, which we have already developed, we can now add the true intuitive ascending into another being: we arrive at Intuition, so that we no longer experience only ourselves, but also learn—in complete individualism yet also in complete selflessness—to experience the other being.

Here love becomes something which gradually makes it possible for us to look back even further than into the pre-earthly spiritual life. As we learn in our present life to look back upon contemporary events, we learn through such an elevation of love to look back upon former earth lives, and to recognize the entire life of a human being as a succession of earthly lives. The fact that these lives once had a beginning and must likewise have an end will be touched upon in another lecture. But we learn to know the human life as a succession of lives on earth, between which there always intervene purely spiritual lives, coming between a death and the next birth. For this elevated form of love, lifted to the spiritual sphere and transformed into a force of knowledge, teaches us also the true significance of death. When we have advanced so far, as I have explained in connection with Imagination and Inspiration, as to render these intensified inner forces capable of spiritual love, we actually learn in immediate exact clairvoyance to know that inner experience which we describe by saying that one experiences oneself spiritually, without a body, outside the body. This passing outside the body becomes in this way, if I may thus express it, actually a matter of objective experience for the soul. If one has experienced this spiritual existence one time outside of the body, clairvoyantly perceived, I should like to say, then one knows the significance of the event of laying aside the physical body in death, of passing through the portal of death to a new, spiritual life. We thus learn, at the third stage of exact clairvoyance, the significance of death, and thus also the significance of immortality, for man.

I have wished to make it transparently clear through the manner of my explanation that the mode of super-sensible cognition about which I am speaking seeks to bring into the very cognitional capacities of the human being something which works effectually, step by step, as it is thus introduced. The natural scientist applies this exactness to the external experiment, to the external observation; he wishes to see the objects in such juxtaposition that they reveal their secrets with exactitude in the process of measuring, enumerating, weighing. The spiritual scientist, about whom I am here speaking, employs this exactness to the evolution of the forces of his own soul. That which he uncovers in himself, through which the spiritual world and human immortality step before his soul, is made in a precise manner, to use an expression of Goethe's. With every step thus taken by the spiritual scientist, in order that the spiritual world may at last lie unfolded before the eyes of the soul, he feels obligated to be as conscientious in regard to his perception as a mathematician must be with every step he takes. For just as the mathematician must see clearly into everything that he writes on the paper, so must the spiritual scientist see with absolute precision into everything that he makes out of his powers of cognition. He then knows that he has formed an “eye of the soul” out of the soul itself through the same inner necessity with which nature has formed the corporeal eye out of bodily substance. And he knows that he can speak of spiritual worlds with the same justification with which he speaks of a physical-sensible world in relationship to the physical eye. In this sense the spiritual research with which we are here concerned satisfies the demands of our age imposed upon us by the magnificent achievements of natural science—which spiritual science in no way opposes but, rather, seeks to supplement.

I am well aware that everyone who undertakes to represent anything before the world, no matter what his motive may be, attributes a certain importance to himself by describing this as a “demand of the times.” I have no such purpose; on the contrary, I should like to show that the demands of the times already exist, and the very endeavor of spiritual science at every step it takes is to satisfy these demands of the times. We may say, then, that the spiritual scientist whom it is our purpose to discuss here does not propose to be a person who views nature like a dilettante or amateur. On the contrary, he proposes to advance in true harmony with natural science and with the same genuine conscientiousness. He desires truly exact clairvoyance for the description of a spiritual world. But it is clear to him at the same time that, when we undertake to investigate a human corpse in a laboratory for the purpose of explaining the life which has disappeared from it, or when we look out into cosmic space with a telescope, we then develop capacities which tend to adapt themselves at first solely to the microscope or telescope, but which possess an inner life and which misrepresent themselves in their form. If we dissect a human corpse, we know that it was not nature that directly made the human being into this bodily form, but that the human soul, which has now withdrawn from it, made it. We interpret the human soul from what we have here as its physical product, and one would be irrational to assume that this molding of the human physical forces and forms had not arisen out of what preceded the present state of this human being. But from all that we hold back, as we meanwhile investigate dead nature with the forces from which one rightly withdraws one's inner activity, from the very act of holding back is created the ability to develop further the human soul forces. Just as the seed of the plant lies out of sight under the earth when we have laid it in the soil, and yet will become a plant, so do we plant a seed in the soul in the very action of conscientious scientific research. He who is a serious scientist in this sense has within himself the germ of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. He needs only to develop the germ. He will then know that, just as natural science is a demand of the times, so likewise is super-sensible research. What I mean to say is that everyone who speaks in the spirit of natural science speaks also in the spirit of super-sensible research, only without knowing this. And that which constitutes an unconscious longing in the innermost depths of many persons today—as will be manifest in another public lecture—is the impulse of super-sensible research to unfold out of its germ.

To those very persons, therefore, who oppose this spiritual research from a supposedly scientific standpoint, one would like to say, not with any bad intention, that this brings to mind an utterance in Goethe's Faust all too well known, but which would be applied in a different sense:

The little man would not sense the Devil
Even if he held him by the throat.

I do not care to go into that now. But what lies in this saying confronts us with a certain twist in that demand of the times: that those who speak rightly today about nature are really giving expression, though unconsciously, to the spirit. One would like to say that there are many who do not wish to notice the “spirit” when it speaks, although they are constantly giving expression to the spirit in their own words!

The seed of super-sensible perception is really far more widespread today than is supposed, but it must be developed. The fact that it must be developed is really a lesson we may learn from the seriousness of the times in reference to external experiences. As I have already said, I should like to go into the details another time: but we may still add in conclusion that the elements of a fearful catastrophe really speak to the whole of humanity today through various indications in the outside world, and that it is possible to realize that tasks at which humanity in the immediate future will have to work with the greatest intensity will struggle to birth out of this great seriousness of the times. This external seriousness with which the world confronts us today, especially the world of humanity, indicates the necessity of an inner seriousness. And it is about this inner seriousness in the guidance of the human heart and mind toward man's own spiritual powers, which constitute the powers of his essential being, that I have wished to speak to you today. For, if it is true that man must apply his most powerful external forces in meeting the serious events awaiting him over the whole world, he will need likewise a powerful inner courage. But such forces and such courage can come into existence only if the human being is able to feel and also to will himself in full consciousness in his innermost being, not merely theoretically conceiving himself but practically knowing himself. This is possible for him only when he comes to know that this being of his emerges from the source from which it truly comes, from the source of the spirit; only when in ever-increasing measure, not only theoretically but practically, he learns to know in actual experience that man is spirit; and can find his true satisfaction only in the spirit: that his highest powers and his highest courage can come to him only out of the spirit, out of the super-sensible.

Dear attendees! The things I will talk about today and tomorrow are the object of knowledge and longing that fills every human soul. On the other hand, however, they are currently the subject of of a discussion in which the pros and cons are raised in the most forceful way, and in which just as much misunderstood scientific knowledge prevails on the one hand as disembodied, but often well-intentioned dilettantism on the other. My task today is to show you that a scientific approach to the study of the human mind and soul is entirely possible, and at the same time to point out the pitfalls of dilettantism, amateurism and the like in this particular field. We will see, my dear audience, that in the field of real spiritual research, as it is meant here, it is a matter of striving for a completely new kind of knowledge, not just another field of knowledge, a kind of knowledge that neither the ordinary science of the present nor the layman has a proper concept of, but a kind of knowledge But a way of knowing that, on the other hand, is already prepared to the furthest extent in the instincts, in the unconscious impulses of the souls of our time, and of which one will most certainly - like the one who is imbued with this kind of spiritual science - in the not too distant future have a very different view than in the present.

The subject I will be speaking about today and tomorrow is, however, often dismissed as dreamy, fantastic or even worse. Anyone who wants to work their way scientifically towards this kind of knowledge, which is what I want to talk about, must, however, have experienced two prerequisites, and I am talking about experiences. One cannot approach the science in question here in the way that, as a young person, one can approach any other science after the usual preparation. If one wants to apply this science in practice, one must strive for total human knowledge using different methods. One must have fully experienced certain experiences and events.

One experience is to be undergone with that which is rightly admired today in the widest circles and by those people who understand something of the matter, because it has been brought infinitely far by people, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and in the present day. That is the scientific realization; and anyone who wants to penetrate to the spiritual science meant here must know what can be experienced in relation to the great riddle of humanity precisely from the scientific way of knowing. One must have experienced again and again, in inner struggle, how far one can come with this scientific way of knowing in relation to the highest questions of the life of the spirit and soul. And one must not, as is the case with many people, have only reached a certain limit in this field in theory. Rather, one must have reached this limit through an inner spiritual practice. Man must have reached that limit in the same way that science is limited. In its own way and method, science has achieved its results in its field, in which it has achieved such brilliant things, precisely because it has proceeded so conscientiously and precisely, so appropriately to the objects, in its method, as is always the case.

Thus, a person must have gone through all of this: how to conduct scientific research, how to penetrate the secrets of the world through the natural sciences, and how far one can go with this scientific research. But, as Bois-Reymond, the [physiologist] who was famous in the 1870s and is unfortunately much too r forgotten, rightly emphasized, he cannot arrive at purely theoretical conclusions in the study of the soul, for he must not only go through the process of research in this field logically and exactly scientifically in his innermost being, but he must also experience in his soul what is penetrating into human consciousness in this process. He must not only work his way into the field of this science from a purely scientific point of view.

And here it becomes clear – I want to describe the matter today from the point of view of the experience – that precisely when one remains firmly on the ground of natural science, one must come to certain concepts and ideas in the face of which one is repeatedly forced to admit: There one cannot go further, one cannot get through. There people's courage fails, there one stands at the boundary of experience. But it does not have to be that way. Rather, it turns out that concepts with which one brings the forces of nature to one's understanding cannot be penetrated by the scientific mode of knowledge, but remain standing and ultimately shape themselves into a spiritual reality. This spiritual reality remains standing, it does not dissolve in the human interior, it remains as a residue with which one cannot penetrate into this human interior.

I will only hint at the fact that in wrestling with these borderline conceptions, one proceeds as if, figuratively speaking, one saw again, as in a mirror, what one does and develops in scientific learning. It is indeed such a struggle when one develops one's own concepts; but one develops them in relation to the external world, just as a person standing before a mirror develops his own image by forming it through the mirror. And if one tries to penetrate further, then it is as if – to stick with the image – one were to smash the mirror. If the mirror is smashed, you no longer see anything, and so nothing remains if one tries to add to these primary concepts in the same way.

So, if you don't proceed in the right way, it is impossible to arrive at anything other than a realization where you have to stop. This occurs precisely when you don't proceed in the right way, because then you have to break the mirror, that is, the spiritual researcher must not stop at this realization. He must go further and ask himself: What is the inner experience actually like? What is it that our scientific knowledge breaks, that it is as if we wanted to break the mirror when we push further? And when the spiritual researcher then really gets involved in looking at these scientific concepts in relation to the human soul life, when he asks himself the hypothetical question: what would the human being be like if he were to make further scientific discoveries here, if he were to succeed in achieving equally brilliant results in this field, results that he could use over others, and if he were to penetrate beyond this boundary too? - then one must say: human beings would have to be organized differently, have different kinds of cognitive abilities.

But what would that mean? This last question has no bearing on present-day science. From the standpoint of its world view, the question is not asked: What would people have to be like who would penetrate into the fields in a scientific way, into which people want to penetrate in accordance with what they feel as a serious purpose in life, as a longing? We will have to go into this matter in more detail later, but for now I will just state it from the point of view of knowledge and say, quite hypothetically: If the scientific borderline conceptions could be mastered with the means by which they cannot be mastered, then either things would be such that scientific method could penetrate them, or man would be organized in such a way that he could submerge himself in this world, and then man would not be capable of developing a certain power that is closely connected with human life as it is on earth. Man would not be capable, if he were so organized, of developing love for any being or even for his fellow human beings. A person who could see through the world scientifically would be a loveless being in whom the power of love would never take hold. Man would therefore have to be different; love in its various stages up to the highest enthusiasm would be absent at all levels of human existence if, scientifically speaking, these limits did not exist.

This is experienced by the fact that, as a spiritual researcher, one is able to observe human beings so closely that one can say what a person would be like if one or other faculty were missing, if something were to be lost from the entire human organization. Therefore, it can be said that a person who could penetrate to the highest questions in the natural sciences would be a person without love, and thus a very different being from the human being on earth. Not many people today hold this view, because it is the result of many years of scientific research, but many people have an instinct for it. If I may use a paradoxical expression, I would like to say that many people have unconscious knowledge of it. Many people today already say to themselves: That which is called science today cannot bring us satisfaction; that must be sought in other ways. And these other paths are often the stomping ground of such amateur theoretical endeavors by people who say to themselves: Science cannot give me what I am seriously looking for; and they come to make progress towards the solution of these highest human questions by the path of what is often called mysticism in life. But this ordinary mysticism and all that is hidden under different names such as occultism, transcendentalism, and so on, is just as unsuitable for penetrating into the depths of human existence in true reality.

Spiritual science must, on the one hand, have the experiences at the boundary of natural science behind it and, on the other hand, the realization of the inadequacy of ordinary mysticism. And all talk about how what cannot be achieved in the usual way, in a scientific way, must be achieved by trying to experience the spiritual, the comprehensive nature of the world through inner deepening and concentration, does not change this. The one who approaches these things without prejudice, without a ridiculous layman's attitude, will soon realize in his experience that this repeated immersion in the soul, on which mysticism pins so many hopes, contributes just as little to true reality as today's knowledge of nature.

For he who has trained his mind in the natural sciences also knows how to live through what is called mystical contemplation, and knows how to look at it in the right way. He has to go through all these self-experiments, he can do them and can also look at them by doing them, and knows that he will not get any further in this way than to the form of the image of reality. But in this image there is still a great deal of human will and so much that cannot be excluded, what one has experienced so far, and other things that the subconscious holds in the depths of the soul, that mere immersion in the inner self can never provide certainty of knowledge, so that one must say to oneself: Mysticism can help you to delve into yourself to a certain degree, but not to the point of reaching the core of your own humanity, where you can grasp being itself and no longer the mere image that you feel and live.

These two ways of experiencing must be left behind, you have to have stood at these two limits - in relation to the experience of nature and ordinary mystical contemplation - and be able to say to yourself: Outer reality never fully reveals itself, because if it did, we would smash the mirror; reality does not flow into us. And with ordinary mysticism, we do not get close to reality; we remain with the image, we remain with what appears in reality, but we do not dive into it, and an abyss opens up between what outer knowledge of nature is and what mysticism reveals. Only an image remains, only the vapor of a true reality of the soul, which wells up out of reality in the light of the soul. But we cannot cross the abyss, and when we look at reality, it remains completely foreign to us. In this area in particular, the scientific method will never be able to grasp knowledge in practical experience and lead us across this abyss.

I will prove the correctness of my assertion by means of an example taken from literature. The example shows how helpless a natural scientist feels when approaching the inner life of man. This example is described in a collection that deals with these two borderline issues, in the so-called Wiesbaden Collection, Waldstein, and from this example it is quite clear what a helpless situation a natural scientist of the present day is in when he wants to penetrate into the depths of the soul using this method. The author of this writing about the unconscious self recounts: He was once standing in front of a bookshop; he is a naturalist, there are many books in the bookshop, and his eye falls on a book entitled 'On Molluscs'. This may interest the naturalist, since in this case it touches on his area of expertise, and as he looks at the title of the book 'On Molluscs', Waldstein suddenly feels compelled to smile.

Now he is himself amazed at why he has to smile, because a serious naturalist cannot be moved to smile, and looking at something as serious as the book “On Molluscs” is no reason to smile. He wants to find out why this book about mollusks seems to make him smile, and he does so very ingeniously by closing his eyes and trying to just listen. And then he hears a very distant organ grinder that he hadn't heard while he was focusing on the book about mollusks. And the organ was playing a melody that he learned to dance to ten years ago. He also didn't pay much attention to the melody when he was learning to dance, because, as he says, he paid much more attention to his steps and to his partner, but not to the melody; so at that time he didn't pay attention to the melody , now his attention was completely diverted and only a faint sound resonates in his soul, which also only faintly sounded ten years ago, and yet - this faintly dawning experience awakened in him the impression that he begins to smile in front of the solemn mollusc beech.

You can see what the person who faces this solemn thing has to say to himself: What he brings up there and out of his soul, which cannot be explained at all. The naturalist Waldstein only noticed the matter by closing his eyes and investigating, and one must say: the person who reflects on this must realize that this human memory is something quite remarkable. We have a general grasp of our ordinary powers of recollection and we can usually say what our memories relate to – for this is based on our powers of imagination. However, we can never guarantee that unconscious extraneous elements are not mixed in. Nevertheless, what is entrusted to our memory forms part of the best of our soul life. ... [Gap]

When a spiritual researcher encounters an observation like the Waldsteins', he realizes that he needs to look again in his inner experience and ask himself: How is it that ordinary mysticism, this immersion in one's own mind, cannot possibly approach a reality? Anyone who has become acquainted with the scientific conscientiousness in contemporary natural science repeatedly and intensely asks such questions and will in many cases be able to indicate how people who believe that they can draw a mighty and powerful Being into their soul through mystical contemplation are actually unconsciously repeating the sounds of a once-heard barrel organ. They say he has immersed himself in the divine being, but that is not true; a youthful impression has emerged in him and is reflected in him.

True science must be as critical as possible; but if you force yourself to truly and truly observe yourself, you will be able to tell yourself why you cannot get to the place where our being is rooted through the path of ordinary mysticism. And you come to realize that in the ordinary life of a person, you cannot aspire to reach the point where the human soul plunges into reality, because you would lack what you need to be human in this life. If you want to penetrate into the depths of reality with your ordinary life of ideas, you do something other than penetrating into your own being, and that is that you either develop your perception and what you experience, whether it be as self-awareness or as fate, or you practice mysticism and reshape what becomes memory in the depths. We would have no memory if we could penetrate to the sources of our being. And so the work we wanted to do on our way into the depths of our souls is stopped, so that what we experience spiritually can later be brought up again through memory. We must not penetrate into our selves, otherwise we would know nothing. We cannot penetrate into what our being is because we have to stop earlier.

Therefore, it is not surprising that we do not delve into it spiritually, but are stopped by our memory, and so it comes to pass that we stand before the abyss of knowledge for two reasons: because man would have to be a completely different being if he could penetrate into the knowledge of nature; he would be a being devoid of love; and the other reason is that If a person in their normal consciousness were to delve into their own inner being and immerse themselves in their own reality, they would have no memory or recall, and you know what it would mean for a healthy human life if a person had no memory. For millennia, the health of our soul life has consisted in our ability to remember.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I had to say first, because those who want to become true spiritual researchers must have these experiences behind them. One can begin with spiritual science, but not with spiritual research, without building it on the great disappointments, on the disappointments of life, which consist in the realization that one cannot solve the riddle of life by scientific means and that one cannot cross the boundary within through ordinary mysticism... [Gap] But on the spiritual side, it – spiritual science – can only build in the same way that natural science does in the external physical realm. Spiritual science must change consciousness if it is to penetrate to the depths of human existence. Just as one does not leave water as it is when one wants to do chemical experiments, but has to change it, break it down into hydrogen and oxygen using special devices, in order to arrive at what can be scientifically investigated, so in real spiritual research one must make changes to one's inner being, one must make a make a ruthless confession of life, the earnest confession that one cannot get behind the riddles of humanity with the cognitive abilities one has in life, but that one must shape and form them until one can penetrate through them into the depths where ordinary consciousness does not penetrate.

And because that is the case, because you really don't need to develop knowledge of nature on the one hand and mystical knowledge on the other in order to penetrate the human mystery through experiments, but because you have to strive for a different knowledge, you have to make our soul different from what it usually is, this path is still widely avoided, and what this science is supposed to achieve. It is shunned just as much as Copernicanism was shunned in its time, when people still had different ways of thinking. And just as the habits of thought of that time were overcome in the course of time, and as even the opposing communities had to decide to accept Copernicanism, so the time will come when all opposition will accept what is being sought here as spiritual research, but which can only be created through the transformation of the life of the soul.

This transformation of human life is described in detail in my books, in which it is characterized in principle from a few points of view, about which those who have heard my earlier Vienna lectures are better informed. There I also said that it is not a matter of somehow transforming the ordinary everyday life of a person and making it unhealthy, but of making progress in the field of the inner experience of human existence, and that through this the soul must become something different through inner exercises and activities in a very specific direction than it reveals itself in ordinary consciousness. This can only be the case when one wants to be a spiritual researcher.

Many people believe that with this method one can transform the whole person into something else. But one cannot, one cannot be a spiritual researcher from awakening to falling asleep, because otherwise one would fill the whole person with what can lead us straight into the spiritual realm of existence. On the one hand, the human being would be shaped in such a way that his ability to remember would not function properly, and on the other hand, his ability to love would take a wrong turn. But if the soul is practised in the right way, which is what we are talking about in principle, then what I have described as a danger does not occur, but rather a strengthening of the human being occurs, because it must be emphasized again and again that everything that spiritual research can give can only be gained through spiritual research, but that one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to have the ability to understand what has been researched.

Just as not everyone can be a chemist and yet chemical knowledge rules in life, so not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher who, through their common sense, understands how the results of spiritual research are based on truth, because it is possible for everyone to become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent and to test for themselves whether everything that spiritual research claims is possible.

The essential thing is that the soul life transforms itself in such a way that it accomplishes inner tasks that would otherwise not be possible. How to do that is explained in the books I have mentioned, but in principle I wanted to discuss it here. One can awaken the ability to detach oneself from all impressions of everyday life, an ability that one must learn, however, just as one must learn to do physical experiments, and in the same way one must be able to extinguish all impressions of the outside world for the spiritual and soul. One must be able to induce such a state of mind through inner experiments, which one otherwise induces when one is in a dreamless sleep.

But when we put ourselves in a position to sleep in this way, we must not completely abandon consciousness. Instead, our inner soul life is strengthened in such a way that when we return to our ordinary life, the full waking consciousness can be maintained, although we do not have to rely on external impressions to spark this consciousness. Supersensible awareness is a full awareness of our inner soul life, which we achieve by developing an inner activity that is purely soul-spiritual and does not play into our everyday life. The activities have to be spiritual-soul activities, and we see the inner soul life that would otherwise be used to absorb external impressions. We save the strength that would otherwise be used for perception. This is how thinking and imagining come to life, and thinking and imagining flow together.

It is a coming together within a life in which the inner self becomes conscious through having a picture in front of you that is formed by arbitrarily combining shapes, which cannot be interpreted in a bad mystical sense. But one must also be aware that the inner life of the soul will be strengthened in this way, that it will become more intense, that a different self-awareness will be evoked by imagining just as vividly as one perceives. One achieves this by practising one's soul, by completely grasping something new, by processing its image in the soul, which makes no claim to represent itself in energetic thinking and soul life. At first one senses only an inner strengthening of self-awareness. This is one side of the feeling that the human soul must unite with itself. But one also recognizes that which one has previously developed more or less unconsciously in one's inner depths, but it does not lead to making something permanent.

If nothing else were added, such an inner soul life would be completely forgotten; it would only be an experience in the immediate present, because it does not cling to the power of remembrance. Those who object to the methods of real spiritual research and science on the grounds that they too can only unconsciously call upon the power of remembrance should admit that it is precisely the power of remembrance that is excluded and does not participate. Everything that one experiences anew and that has so strengthened one's consciousness does not go down into the region of the powers of remembrance. It is something that forms inwardly but is not suitable for a person to keep within. What is experienced through spiritual research is not suitable for waking remembrance and lives only in that inner life that is awakened by the distant sounds of the barrel organ.

What I have explained here leads first to a strengthening of the inner life of the soul, to a strengthening of self-awareness. The person who practices this comes to say to himself: I can do it this way and I now know where it comes from. I have the high feeling that with my soul, when I have changed it, I can recognize the sources of life and the physical basis for it. I think that those are right who consider the ordinary life of the soul as bound to the body; I know that if one wants to arrive at this self-consciousness, which recognizes itself in this way, one must say: I do not recognize through my body. But one must first have gone through what I have described.

But one must go one step further. The one who practices the exercise I have been talking about for years of his life notices that he enters into a strange way of further exploring this self-transformation. He comes to a way of experiencing in which these images overwhelm him to a certain degree; he acquires in his soul a certain ability for pictorial representation. This is heightened fantasy, this is heightened imaginative experience. One attains imaginative experience, but one must continue to shape the soul through ever more advanced voluntary self-education. Through ever greater strengthening of the inner will, one must learn to master the inner images when they begin to want to master him. Otherwise, one would only ever see one's own images. But if you succeed in mastering them, you will also be able not only to shape these images, but also to remove them.

You also have to have this power, and you acquire it through the exercises I have described, through which you gain control over your inner formative activity. But then the soul feels different when you have really gone through these inner processes and increased your self-awareness by forming images, and when you can now erase these images. Then you are in a world that is different from the world of ordinary reality; now you are in a spiritual reality through the transformed soul life.

This can be compared to the natural development of the senses; one must see what one has developed like an inner, spiritual eye. But this is initially like a physical eye whose cornea is still cloudy. By erasing the image, one must first heal the eye before it is able to see the image. While in the past it was possible to strengthen self-awareness, now the imagination may look into another world, which cannot be revealed in any other way than this.

But one must have courage to go through such an experience of the soul if one wants to penetrate into the reality of the spiritual world. And then the following occurs: one feels as if awakened in a new world. This awakening in a new world is an experience, it is like waking up from dream-life into ordinary life, and one now knows: in dream-life one had no reality before one, but in waking-life one has the happenings of reality before one. Thus one can awaken out of the world of physical reality into the spiritual reality.

But there must also be something from the other side. In our ordinary life, there are not only perceptions and perceptions, but also feeling forces that have a certain direction in each person. They have perceptions and perceptions that need to be transformed, and the feeling powers must also be withdrawn from the external world. Through the inner concentration of life, man must be able to bring about his calmness towards the external world for all feelings and the willing life. The soul life must not be stimulated by anything that stimulates it from the external world. The will must not be directed towards anything external. Nothing external must be allowed to cause a change. The spirit must be uninvolved in the external world at the moment when it approaches spiritual research.

Then a remarkable transformation takes place in the soul of the human being; one makes the discovery that previously, in ordinary consciousness, all perceptions and ideas were delimited by our feelings. Now that memory is eliminated, now that we are outwardly calm, the feelings and will of life can penetrate into the soul, into that which we have developed; and as the soul has awakened, that which is formed in the inner soul through the repressed feelings that still slumber within, flows into it. Now an inner complement of thinking, feeling and willing arises, which are no longer the same as they are in ordinary consciousness. One has not only awakened, because in the awakening of the soul life, the outer mind also lives and reveals itself as it reveals itself through the senses in ordinary reality.

Through the transformation of the inner soul forces, through feeling and will, one can approach the things of the spiritual world. New abilities show up that would otherwise remain dormant in the soul. What I have described gives the soul the opportunity to develop such powers with which it can penetrate into the spiritual world, but only for the time in which it is doing spiritual research.

But these powers are different from the powers of ordinary consciousness, and misunderstandings arise because people do not distinguish between the soul's attitude when it is doing spiritual research and ordinary consciousness. To explore the realities of the spirit, the soul must apply what is described to itself. And people only resist this because they avoid seriously acquiring the powers that can only penetrate when applied in the right way. Then they would also see how different these abilities are from those we have in ordinary life and which we need for a healthy life. What the soul experiences, it experiences through these supersensible soul powers, not through the ordinary ones, as with the outer sense effects or mental images, which do not come about other than as remembering. What is experienced in the spirit is not a mere process of imagination, not mere fantasy, and what the spirit experiences in this way is not transformed into the ability to remember. One does not simply remember, but one must approach the experience again, and that is how this process differs from fantasy, that is how one recognizes it as the expression of real spiritual activity.

You will allow me to tie in with personal matters; but in this area there is much that has to tie in with personal matters, because spiritual research is tied to the person. I can look back with complete clarity to the moment in my life – it was many years ago – when I was able to see for the first time how, in the clouds and the sky, in short, in the external world, forces are at work that do not come from this life or from what we have inherited from father and mother, but such forces that one can say come from a life in a spiritual world that preceded our earthly life, before we connected with the forces generated by father and mother. During this life of the soul, powers are perceived and other powers, which come from previous lives, are active in the perception. One comes to such direct insight, but the most important thing is that one experiences this insight and knows that the spiritual world is also active in the ordinary consciousness, in the will and in all true perceptions. But it would be in vain to try to recall such an experience later, to bring it back to mind, if one has not done something quickly enough to be able to bring it back into one's memory later. What one must do must be done with complete clarity of consciousness, because remembering is impossible. Memory is excluded for the spiritual experience of the soul, and one only remembers something else when one is back in the ordinary life of the soul. And one can only see the experience with reversed memory and one can say to oneself: How did I come to have such a spiritual experience, what did I do, what did the soul think and feel before that it came about? How did this experience come about? One can remember that, not the experience itself, but how one came to it. One must remember that, one must go to this experience of the spiritual world by not recreating the experience, but recreating the conditions of the experience.

And when I speak to you about the conception of a lecture like today's, which is about spiritual matters, I must also say: You cannot do it as you would with ordinary lectures. I often give such lectures, but I have to say that it is extremely difficult for me to be able to hold on to such a lecture through ordinary memory. One can only prepare for it by creating the conditions under which one originally came to it, and that is what I want to tell the listeners. One wants to speak to the spiritual world and to do that one has to create the conditions. But because that is the case, it turns out that one can never count on retaining a spiritual experience in mere memory. But one can look into the spiritual world and then what one has to say comes to the fore. Those who want to see into the spiritual world must renounce the memory of the spiritual world.

This is indeed a disappointment for some. One can train oneself by practicing the powers to see into the experiences and processes of the spiritual world, but one does not remember them and is disappointed because the spiritual experiences dissolve into nothing, and that is precisely the disappointment of all beginners. But by re-establishing the conditions, one also awakens the memory in an artificial way, which is not imagination, and what was seen spiritually then remains, as a dream remains in the memory, and one sees what one has seen in the spiritual life. It comes to looking, one sees how that which itself seems to fade out and pass away, remains, one sees back into the past, but in a sense one cannot remember it.

Another thing comes up that also leads to certain disappointments for the beginner. It is the contrast to ordinary healthy earthly life, where one can develop powers that, like skill and habit, for example, are increased by certain repeated actions, and one can strengthen these powers in ordinary sensory life through repetition. In ordinary sensory life it is like that, but in the experience of the spirit it is the opposite. As paradoxical and absurd as it may sound, the more often one has a spiritual experience, the more difficult it is to bring it about again. And if you want to have the spiritual experience again and again, you have to make ever greater efforts to have it again. So you experience things in the opposite way to sensory experiences and realize that, in order to finally experience, you have to look at such experiences as quickly as possible. Because the experiences of the soul have the peculiarity of passing by as quickly as possible, they pass by unnoticed for those who have only done a few exercises and do not have the necessary presence of mind to really hold such experiences.

Many more people would have spiritual experiences if they had the necessary presence of mind. We live in the midst of spiritual life. But people do not have the presence of mind to really grasp them; and when they decide to turn their attention to them, the experience is over. Therefore, a thorough exercise is necessary, and in my books you will find how to prepare for this presence of mind, so that you are able to quickly decide in ordinary life situations, to quickly make these decisions. One must get into the habit of making the first decision definitively, and those people who unnecessarily turn every thing around in all directions and keep changing their minds, these loners of life, who muddle around even in ordinary life, they can never make quick decisions and observe mental experiences. They refrain from applying the intended exercises to such experiences. But they have to be there, because only then do the abilities arise in the soul that make the soul suitable for observing such processes. And then it will be able to give itself the answer as to why one cannot approach this mystery by the way of natural knowledge and ordinary mysticism, because this soul life between birth and death is bound to the living body, and one must look at something else that is not bound to ordinary life.

The moment one has acquired the ability to look at spiritual events that are not retained in memory – because this is bound to the body – the question that intrudes into human life and forms the human riddle is also answered. The first question is a philosophical issue, but we cannot get to the bottom of it because we only have it as an ordinary experience; yes, even if the sounds of a street organ suddenly play into our ordinary soul life and we , we can never be sure what drives them up. There is one thing that arises in our ordinary mental life and to which we must relate differently than to all the other ideas and thoughts present in this mental life. It is [...] logical and, so to speak, pure thinking, apart from such impressions of the sounds of the street organ; we can tell right from wrong. Logic is often written only for schools. But these questions cannot be answered with this school logic. If, however, we engage with these things with real logic, then we will also be able to tell, in a certain sense, what is right and what is wrong, quite apart from what is conscious and what is unconscious, what is sympathetic and what is antipathetic.

If we reach into the life of the soul in this way and ask ourselves why this is so, we only experience the answer when we observe with the described and transformed life of the soul, and only then do we realize that forces are at play in our soul that impel us to these considerations, forces that reach into our life from the life we led earlier, before our parents had produced us, forces that we acquired from the spiritual life before birth or before conception. But the one who cannot look into the thinking activity cannot think correctly about the eternal spirit that presents itself in him. Therefore, one can also say what many have already said: the transformation of the soul life happens in such a way that, so to speak, the whole soul life is transformed as if mystically, but this in a higher sense. For what would a musical melody be if memory did not play an effective role in the tones heard?

But it is not memory that plays a part in this soul life, but past reality itself. What has already passed lives again in the present of our soul life. And so, in our pure thinking, mixed with our ordinary soul life, lives the spiritual soul that was already there before we connected with matter. And when we then consider these perceptions and can make them transparent and look at the spirit through the powers of the soul, then we find the earlier earth life looking back, which can be perceived and experienced. We think human experiences that were previously limited in themselves; we see that we can look back to the eternal spirits through spiritual research.

These are the fundamental, the source points of human knowledge, which this kind of knowledge opens up to the one who searches for it, and therein lies the freedom of the human soul. The spiritual researcher who wants to talk about freedom has made the question of human freedom his main subject for decades. Decades ago I wrote a book about human freedom; in this book I showed that one has to ascend from physical strength to pure spiritual strength. This is the second question, which, like the first, is linked to thinking, the question of freedom, which is an experience for everyone but cannot be scientifically investigated. Whatever is bound to natural science will never be able to occur in freedom.

Yet everyone knows what actions are free. I have already said which actions in human life can be called free. Only certain types of actions are free: for example, when we have a being beside us that we love, for what is love in true reality of the soul? Love has different types; it can be selfish, an egoism because it is pleasant to love what is pleasant to love; but even this love can change, it can spiritualize, it can look at other beings, and then selfishness towards the beloved being is completely excluded.

Yes, I was right a quarter of a century ago when I contradicted the commonly held saying “love is blind”. That is completely wrong, because in reality it should be: “love gives sight”. Of course, only those who are able to exclude themselves, who merge with the being they love, who are capable of pursuing the various phases of love to the highest degree, only they can grasp what free actions are. We do many things out of selfishness in life, but it happens that we also perform actions for which we stand just as we do when we are with a beloved being who is sympathetic to us. We will not want to perform actions that we consider wrong before pure thinking and devotion; these actions must be done out of love. We ourselves will only act correctly if we love the spirit.

Freedom and love for action are concepts that cannot be separated, and one cannot ask: Is a person free or unfree? No, because a person is unfree in his will for actions out of necessity, out of instincts, out of the subconscious of his soul life, but he becomes free by being able to hate and love what he considers necessary to do for himself and the world. When one correctly reveals through the transformed soul powers what is needed in love and real freedom by people as a motive for their will, then one can penetrate not through mysticism, but through this transformation of soul powers into spiritual reality, and one discovers that a mysterious power dwells in man, like the germ in the plant for the next plant.

This germ also lives in the human soul; however, it is covered and the person does not have the opportunity to see it; but he has acquired the ability to look back at his intentions and desires. Then one also sees what is going on in a person when he performs acts out of love. In the life of the soul, spiritually and mentally conditioned free acts are at work. Just as a person is rooted in the present life and can perceive what he thinks correctly and incorrectly, so in the future one's earthly life will become something like it was in the past, as we pass through the gate of death and the seed planted for the future remains in us, covered by the life of feeling and willing. We see... [gap], how the germs that we planted in past earthly lives must come to life when we lay down our lives; and we will also glimpse the life before birth. We perceive life in the spirit before birth and after death by looking beyond what is bound to the organism through feeling and willing. We also see that spiritual research is not something mystical, not something that can be brought in comfortably, but it strives in those areas that are the longing areas of all people who want to awaken to life.

There is an unbridgeable abyss between what we call the life of memory and what natural phenomena have built up before us for the first time. By evoking such forces to destroy the image and retain the powers of memory, we plunge into that which must not be plunged into in ordinary life; but in so doing we gain the possibility of plunging into that world which is not intended for ordinary life. This leads us to real spiritual research; it will one day be a science, just as Copernicanism became a science when it broke with the old soul life.

It is understandable that this research is misunderstood from various sides and that it faces hostility. To the mystic it does not appear suitable because spiritual research does not do enough mysticism for him; and others believe that they must rely on natural science alone. But it will come one day, and they will see that spiritual research is a pure science. There is also fear that superstition will revive and that amateurism will occur in serious research. But that is not the case either.

I could only establish the principles, only describe the beginning of these things. But everyone has the opportunity to discover for themselves the areas that are important in practical life and certain human experiences, especially with regard to the present day, that confirm my explanations. I just wanted to say what spiritual research has to do to unlock such areas. It will be misunderstood from left and right, because for this spiritual research it is not necessary to penetrate into new areas, but to penetrate into these areas in a new way, to develop new concepts for the new reality, which are unfamiliar to most people today. But they are not completely foreign to them, because in this spiritual research there are forces that today lie dormant in the human soul, that today awaken in real human life in these difficult times. When they are brought into contact with many things that seem to come from ancient times, when old experiences are awakened in us from time to time, then those concerned know that they must long for something different from what people have offered so far.

The development of humanity must continue. The needs for this are present, we have advanced to a new science, but people do not yet know about it. But they are present, and also the further surroundings, who still deny them today, dream of them and strive in constant longing for this spiritual science, which is not a program and not an arbitrariness, because the spiritual science is only that what people actually want, what they long for, what lies dormant deep in the subconscious, and I am convinced that what spiritual science has to offer is nothing other than the satisfaction of what people long for. And neither people of the present nor people of the future can do without it.

Dear attendees! The day before yesterday, I took the liberty of speaking here about the spiritual-scientific approach to how it should lead to true reality. On the basis of these discussions, I would like to give some applications of this spiritual-scientific view of reality today, some applications in the field of human life, which, it seems to me, are of great importance for life practice, especially in our time, and certainly even more so in the future , not so much because I believe it is necessary to talk about the historical way of thinking in a larger circle, but because I think it is important to present such historical considerations for the practice of life.

The great poet and writer Goethe believed he could judge the value of the historical perspective as it was particularly evident in his time in a way that he expressed in the following words: “The best thing about history is the enthusiasm it arouses in us.” One could be forgiven for thinking that Goethe was dismissing all the possibilities that people otherwise see in historical observation when they seek to answer the recurring question of what one's presence in life is for and what one can learn from the history and behavior of people for one's practical life by observing human life.

Now, however, it must be said that the more one immerses oneself in the historical way of thinking, the more one comes to the conclusion that it can indeed, as perhaps this Goethean saying also means, be a summary of a rich life experience, a rich life wisdom. Especially in our time, one is very often led to a strange impression by the question: What can one gain from history for life? Our catastrophic present must repeatedly suggest to us that significant forces of human life are at work across the whole earth, that experiences are taking place from which we can learn an enormous amount for our lives in relation to the present. And it must also be said that some things are happening today that could give us cause for concern in relation to these questions.

Of the hundreds of cases that could be cited in this regard, I would like to highlight just one that has a certain significance with regard to the present suffering. In August, September and October of 1914, one could very often hear from people who are quite astute, who certainly have a sound judgment in the sense that one can have today – I repeat: in the sense that one today and as it has been formed from the historical and practical-historical point of view - one could therefore hear from these people at the time that this war would certainly not last longer than four, at most six months, given the prevailing conditions.

It must be said that at the time there was no reason to smile or be ironic about such a statement. It was precisely those people who had keenly followed the latest historical events in some area or other, whether economic, socio-political or otherwise, who made such statements, and these were by no means unfounded according to the results of the historical perspective. But today the anxious question arises before us: What have we had to experience in reality itself in the face of such a historically based view? And the further question may follow: What could reality still bring in terms of our lives? - One simply comes to the question: Is there a way to look at our usual way of understanding history in such a way that we can draw conclusions about the present from our immediate life practice?

I would like to give an example from a time long past, the example of a man whose name vouches for the fact that he did not make a judgment out of carelessness and unreason, the judgment of a man whose importance you will immediately recognize when I name, who in 1789 took up his professorship of history at a German university and wanted to discuss what had emerged as the conclusion that he had to draw from the historical consideration that he now had to present to his students. He said: “Perhaps the various European states have worked their way to the point where they resemble the members of a large family, who may still fight among themselves in the future, but who will never be able to tear each other apart again.”

This judgment of a mind, which he expressed in his inaugural address from the depths of his historical research on the eve of the French Revolution, certainly contains an insight from which one can say that reality is quite different from what even the most profound historian could have suspected. For when we consider what followed in Europe, we cannot say that the members of the European family can feud with each other, but not tear each other apart. And yet, Friedrich Schiller, who made this judgment, was right when he took up his professorship of history in Jena.

We see that one does not need to be short-sighted to err when it comes to applying the historical way of thinking to the practice of life. Because the way the question is formulated and the way we have been forced to apply the historical perspective and the historical way of looking at things so far, which has led to this or that result, was probably not suitable for reaching into reality with the right judgment so that this reality can be mastered in such a way that one would also come out of the historical consideration to an appropriate application of one's will in relation to reality.

Today, it cannot truly be said that this question is not extremely important, because today, when it comes to human life in human community, we can no longer embrace only a small perspective. We are in the midst of catastrophic events that have gradually taken hold of the entire earth, and the challenge is to people to not remain within the narrow confines of their own considerations, but to try to get an impulse from historical observation that could extend across the whole earth, at least in a certain direction. There is a feeling, at least in certain circles, that the old way of looking at history – I will pick out just one example, the one by Ranke – would no longer suffice for the demands of the new life.

What has emerged in this respect becomes interesting when one broadens one's perspective, and especially when the observer of history pauses and asks himself: What emerges in the life of the whole person when one looks at the way in which human history is viewed? I will select a characteristic example that can illustrate many things for us today. I will first disregard the fact that the German historian Karl Lamprecht felt how inadequate Ranke's way of thinking is, and that he has made the attempt to motivate historical events in a more inward way, to set the impulses instead of the people, and thus to consider and examine historically more, how the impulses have given rise to events over time.

Of the many things that could be considered in the case of Lamprecht, a summary is to be considered, which he gave when he gave lectures at the beginning of this century in some places in America about his way of understanding the history of his people. I know very well that today there are numerous opponents who consider Lamprecht's way perhaps mistaken, perhaps even enthusiastic. But you must admit that Lamprecht is trying to proceed in the right way by attempting to bring the inner motives and forces in human life into line with the concept of history. His intention in doing so can be seen from the lecture he has given, in which he wanted to show how he conceives the course of German history according to his way of thinking.

Lamprecht also has a special way of explaining the historical development of a people. I will only very briefly point out what Karl Lamprecht came to in the course of his long life. He says: If we look back to the first period of the historical development of the Germans, up to the third century after Christ, we find that all the soul-forces out of which the historical life and the historical interrelations of men arise are based on a certain soul-condition of our ancestors in those ancient times. This soul-condition Karl Lamprecht characterizes as the symbolizing soul-condition. From this state of mind, that social structure then arose through which life itself takes on the character of a symbol, and not only that life becomes a symbolic representation, but also when a leading personality appears, she appears with such a state of mind that one could say this personality is a symbol for the whole tribe.

This is what Karl Lamprecht found from the third to the tenth century; but then it is a completely different state of mind that emerges and makes history. It is now the subjective-typical way in which no longer the symbol is represented, no longer the personality in the symbol, but the type, the representative of the tribe and the tribal nature becomes. Customary rights now become established, and people interact in such a way that they reveal the typical aspects of these circumstances and shape them into a certain social structure.

From the eleventh to the mid-fifteenth century, in the history of mankind, according to Karl Lamprecht's way of presenting it, what he calls the conventional age occurs. No longer does something emerge from the soul and lead to a symbol or type, but individual people, out of tradition or reason, determine the leading persons or leading circles of what should regulate the whole mutual context. This leads to certain conventions and certain judgments. This is the age of knighthood, the age in which the social structure is formed through which the conventions can particularly take hold.

Now it is very strange that Karl Lamprecht places the most significant point in history in the middle of the fifteenth century, because the historical impulse begins with the fifteenth century. Lamprecht says: In the middle of the fifteenth century, the development of German history begins - and he believes that such a course can be applied to the historical development of the entire tribe, that people now no longer appear as a type or conventionally, but that people are now individuals and as such are part of the historical process and the social order. According to Karl Lamprecht, this [individual] age lasted until the eighteenth century, and then the age in which we live began, the [subjective] age, in which more and more is introduced into historical life that people experience and that does not determine them from the outside, but that touches them within. Thus more understandable elements enter into the course of historical knowledge, the educated public begins to play a role, whereas in the symbolic and conventional age one had to deal more with elementary forces that, coming instinctively from within man, influenced the will and the social structure.

From this it can be seen what Karl Lamprecht is striving for; he strives to bring into human history that which conditions the course and development of events in the human soul. He seeks to penetrate deeply into the picture of human society and believes that intensive historical research should only be a preparation for what it is all about. But it should endeavor to penetrate into the human soul in order to show how history is created from the human soul.

If we look at these attempts to observe historical developments in a certain strict way, we will find, when we follow the individual types, that they leave us highly unsatisfied in many respects, especially when we go through the individual epochs as described by Karl Lamprecht. One finds that the same concepts keep cropping up, and while he thinks that the epochs are different, he cannot grasp what he wants to grasp because he is unable to delve into reality itself. Nevertheless, this attempt is interesting because Karl Lamprecht shows us that a way must be sought to an inner consideration of history, to a spiritualization of historical research. And it is very interesting, from this point of view, to compare what another man has presented here on the basis of serious historical endeavor, who seeks to compare the history of his own people with the history of another and does so with a different kind of historical research. From this it will be possible to see how two personalities, one belonging to a particular area of human life and the second to a completely different one, relate to historical reflection.

This other personality is Woodrow Wilson, who, at the very time when Karl Lamprecht was speaking to the Americans about the history of his people, was making an attempt that led to the conclusion that he had reached from a completely different point of view, as he observed the history of his American people. Something very peculiar emerges here. It is of particular interest for everyone to observe a personality who is very distant from us in the same field as Karl Lamprecht. But with Wilson, we encounter a great peculiarity. He looks at the history of his American people, which is quite easy to overlook. But with this short period of American history, Wilson and Lamprecht are – it must be said – in a strange contrast, whereby one feels what is important to both of them.

Wilson wants to grasp what he is supposed to represent and what is characteristic for the development of the American people, and one sees how he, by continuing from one point to the next, actually manages to present the whole history of his people in an extremely plausible way. He shows how wrong all those are who apply a historical way of thinking to America according to the pattern of the way of thinking that comes from England and that they want to apply to American life, without realizing that America has shaped its life under special preconditions. Wilson wants to create pure Americanism in his own way; he points out that it is a striking phenomenon precisely in America that culture in America gradually moved from the east to the west, where it was only fully developed in later times. From the east to the west, people have moved, overcoming the wilderness, and he shows how the development of American history lies in this struggle against the wilderness, how everything that Americans have done in life has come about because the west had to be conquered from the east. American history was not made by politicians or diplomats, but by hunters who felled the trees, and by farmers who moved into the wilderness and cultivated the fields. These were also the most important questions for Americans: questions of agriculture and farming. Wilson views American history from this perspective and comes to a [plausible] solution to these questions by showing how these questions arose and why it has become necessary for this advance to move from east to west.

One has to say that one gets the impression that Wilson, in his own way, describes the history of the American people quite correctly, he knows the relationship between the things he describes and presents. You can feel how he puts something very remarkable into it by seeking to find the salient points in American history; and when he says that it is a characteristic of the American, his mobile eye, his passion to seek adventure, to situations quickly and to carry out something quickly, to do his part for his country, that all these plans should be quickly conceived and executed, then one feels with everything that is in it: He knows where the salient points are.

Woodrow Wilson also spoke about [the method] of his historical presentation in a rather interesting lecture; and I must say that I find something extraordinarily characteristic in this lecture in particular. I should also like to take this opportunity to say that, although I have now told you how Wilson describes the history of his people, Woodrow Wilson is not a personality that one could call sympathetic in any way, and not for subjective reasons, but because I believe that such a way of looking at things as Wilson uses it cannot be fruitful in our parts, even though I have to describe it as I have done today. We will come back to this later. But I don't think that anyone who has heard me speak more than once can accuse me of having formed my opinion of Wilson for some kind of jingoistic reasons, as opposed to the opinion that people here have of him. I have long since formed my opinion of Wilson from “literature” and from his advocacy of American freedom, and in a lecture in Helsingfors I also expressed this opinion in the same way as I have done today. So the war has not changed that at all. This can be proved by documents, and therefore I may well speak about his personality as I have done today.

What struck me as strange about Wilson's historical perspective is contrasted when I compare what he himself said about this historical perspective with some very dear and sympathetic explanations of a personality who was only active in a specific field of historical perspective, but who is infinitely sympathetic to me because of the special impulses that could come from her. This is the great master Herman Grimm, who long ago delivered his verdict on how history should be viewed. It is remarkable that one can take individual sentences from Grimm and insert them into Wilson's presentation without interrupting the train of thought. And that one can again insert sentences from Wilson into Grimm's essays; and one then sees that they correspond to what Wilson said.

This experiment can be done, and I consider it to be tremendously significant for the thinking of a certain type of world view and for the way of thinking of the present. It [calls itself practical] believes that it can immerse itself everywhere in all practical realities and in all concepts and is proud of how far it has come in terms of the practical view of life. And yet the present is thoroughly theoretical and stuffed full of intellectual concepts. If someone today listens to an argument from any side, he pays attention only to the content, he follows only the pure wording; this is particularly evident in the present and is very important with regard to what has been said, because everyone must realize that two people can say the same thing according to the wording, but it is quite different in terms of meaning. Theory does not yet account for everything in life, nor does mere intellectual content. But there is something in the way a personality engages with social life that is more than the content of its sentences, that is, the theory; it is how the personality in question speaks, the way it comes out of life and how it comes out, what the personality in question has to say.

And in this example, something very remarkable emerges. When I look at Lamprecht's way of speaking, and I am not speaking from a national point of view, but only from the point of view of objective science – when I look at Lamprecht's view of history, then, despite all the mistakes, I see how people struggle hard, how they struggle hard to achieve what they want to achieve. Perhaps he has fewer concepts than Wilson, but he fights, and you can tell from the way he speaks that the struggling soul acquires from sentence to sentence what it perhaps presents as a false view, but what it has gained through experience. And this is particularly the case with Herman Grimm's brilliant treatment [in the field of art]. And I say to myself, despite all objective appearances: The statements that are dear to me and that I find in Lamprecht as well as in Grimm make a completely different impression in Wilson. I ask myself, and dare to answer: everything that comes out in Wilson is as if he were instinctively driven to the right thing, but it never gives the impression that it is his experience, his striving and It only gives the impression that, although it is directed towards practical reality, it does not emerge from the depths of the soul, but as if what Wilson expresses were a self-suggestion, a kind of subconscious. I believe I acquired the right to use that expression here yesterday. Wilson does not present himself in the same way [in his view of history], as if he were fathoming the soul bit by bit, but it gives the impression as if he were receiving revelations from the depths of his soul, as if he were possessed by his teachings, as if his inner self were suggesting them to him.

It is very strange to see two personalities in historical life who are so different in this way, like Lamprecht and Grimm on the one hand and Wilson on the other. Furthermore, it is also interesting to look at other perspectives. You can't really call them historical, but you can summarize them under the historical considerations.

One could also cite other, Asian observers of life; I will just mention Rabindranath Tagore, who, among other things, has provided a comprehensive account of the spirit of Asia. He also spoke about the spirit of Japan, but something quite different emerges from his account. It emerges that this man, who, just as Lamprecht and Grimm in German and Wilson in American life, is steeped in Asian life, must be seen as an educated representative of Asian culture. If you look at this man's life, you get the impression that he wants to explore the content, the original source of Indian and Japanese life, placing less emphasis on what Japan and India have experienced in modern times and instead investigating what the actual sources are. He has a unique way of admiring human culture; Rabindranath Tagore says that there should not really be any history for his people, the human soul should remain untouched in its inner life by what moves people in the immediate present. Its mode of expression extends across the whole earth, and those who look more deeply know that our great catastrophe depends, more than one might think, not on the things on which it is believed to depend so much today, but on the spiritual impulses of the peoples dwelling across the whole earth.

This is symptomatically evident in the way in which it is presented, which seeks to stand out from the generality and to present what must apply in the life of the generality. And if we look at what is closest to us, the historical conception of Karl Lamprecht, we find that almost every chapter is characterized in the same way and in the same terms. We find that the concepts do not descend into reality. But why is that so? The answer to this question is extremely important. Lamprecht wants to observe the human soul and wants to explore how history is made out of the impulses of the human soul. To do this, he needs to understand the laws of the human soul that show us how the human soul manifests itself in social life. And there he describes the actions in such a way that it is impossible to apply them to other areas of observation that are directly related to life and to come to a correct conclusion; in a word, one finds: you don't get anywhere!

And so the question may well be raised: what it would be like if those researchers of reality, of whom we spoke the day before yesterday, whose knowledge is built up in a completely different way from natural science and mysticism, and which must first be acquired by the soul when the soul is in such a state of consciousness that it is as opposed to the ordinary state of consciousness as day consciousness is to dream consciousness – if those researchers of reality look at history from their insights? In this short time I can only give the results, but they are found through the method I described here the day before yesterday; and the following can be said first: to the superficial observer, human life proceeds in two states, sleeping and waking, and by studying the two states, sleeping and waking, one seeks to understand the entire course of human life.

But things are not that simple, and much harm has been done to the present worldview by the idea that things are much simpler than they really are. In reality, things are quite different, and even what we call the state of sleep, in which our consciousness is dulled, is quite different. Because this sleeping consciousness does not completely disappear during daytime life; it is not only present from falling asleep to waking up, but it also shows itself to the serious soul researcher in real daylight, because we are only awake for part of our soul life. We are awake for our perceptual life and for our imaginative life, but we are not awake for our emotional life and for our will life. The one who seriously studies the most important state, from waking up to falling asleep, will find that the clarity of consciousness, the strength of consciousness, that is present in relation to the life of imagination, is not present in relation to the life of feeling and is especially not present in relation to the life of will.

The way I mean it here has also been noted by other spiritual researchers and by many other thinkers who have wrestled with reality. For example, the Swabian researcher Friedrich Theodor Vischer pointed out how closely all passions, the emotional life, all affects of life in waking consciousness are related to the dream life, and we may say: our feelings are not present in the brightness of consciousness during waking life in consciousness as perceptions or thoughts, but they are only present as feelings, like the images of dreams in the sleeping consciousness; and during sleep consciousness, we remember the images when we are awake. Then the dream image lies in our waking consciousness.

Nothing of the emotional life of the dream comes through clearly to us either; we only have the idea of it in us, but what has actually penetrated into us is not the feeling that we have dreamt; for this gives rise to the illusion in us as if we had the feeling in our soul consciousness, but we do not have it, but it extends from the twilight into the light and evokes the idea, so that we often confuse what we have experienced with what we have dreamed. We also believe that it is the same with the life of the will, but in reality it is this: what protrudes from the actual volitional processes into our world of imagination is that we can form concepts and thoughts about what we do, but what is actually connected with our organization and our soul life eludes consciousness. The actual content of the will, the way it is carried out, from the beginning to the effect (to the movement of the hand, to the grasping of an object), is a thoroughly unconscious process, just as the unconscious processes are in sleep. Therefore, we must say: our waking life is not just a waking life, but also a state of the subconscious, a kind of dream life that extends into our ordinary waking consciousness.

What I have now discussed arises from truly conscientious and serious observation of the soul, at least to a certain extent in the case of ordinary psychology, of which I spoke here the day before yesterday. When the soul succeeds in penetrating into another consciousness that looks into another life, then this consciousness succeeds in arriving at a different observation of the soul. Then, in the depths of the soul, in the form of imaginations [which, however, are not our abstract ideas and thoughts, but which penetrate into life], the feeling that is coming to life awakens, then one knows that what one is brightening up is not present in full reality in the ordinary consciousness, but only in the sleeping consciousness. One must look with intense strength of feeling through this mode of cognition if one wants to bring this feeling and the subconscious of the soul before the ordinary consciousness, and one must make even greater efforts to bring up the act of will as such.

It follows that what we feel and want in everyday life, what forms the impulses for us and the soul content of all individual people, is connected and wells up in the life that unfolds between birth and death, and that these impulses carry us through life, from person to person, and we experience them in dreams or in sleep. But these are also the historical impulses, and it will be a significant insight for the historian of the future when one will recognize the character of these forces living in the people, when one will no longer believe that what occurs in history can be understood in the same way as in ordinary life, for it takes place as if in a dream, as if in the subconscious, so that it does not come to the full and clear consciousness of the human being; he simply does not know it in ordinary life.

This view, which will have to penetrate from spiritual scientific research into historical observation, and only then will historical observation be infallible, only then will it be effective and in accordance with reality. For he who wants to research history today does not think about the fact that history cannot be researched in the old way. The science of history has only emerged in the last century, during which the foundations of scientific knowledge have been developed and the method by which natural science has led to such brilliant results, by bringing humanity so far in terms of external life practice, has been developed. Historical observation has been grasped and developed according to the model that is common, correct and justified in natural science. It is regarded as a kind of ideal natural science and attempts are made to extend this way of looking at things to history as well. Lamprecht had something like this in mind in the background; he said that a way of thinking that is not intended for history is decisive for it, but that it has only emerged from the natural scientific way of looking at things.

The one who has this knowledge, which I have developed, who has recognized that this knowledge relates to daytime consciousness as daytime consciousness relates to sleep consciousness, the one who, from this point of view, looks at the course of historical activity and penetrates into the course of of historical wisdom, it becomes clear that this behavior of our soul is fully justified in relation to nature, in relation to the thought with which we gain knowledge of nature, but that this old way of looking at things is not suitable for judging the course of human life as history. But this approach to the course of historical events is also characteristic of the whole nineteenth-century way of looking at things: people do not realize that the impulses are rooted in the unconscious course of life and that they cannot be grasped with the ordinary mind. If one bears this in mind, then one comes to wonder: what must take the place of what is today?

Herman Grimm made some very correct remarks about this and he understood many things very correctly in relation to the history of mankind and felt very clearly how the spirit of science can emerge again. He thought - and he discussed this subject very thoroughly with me - that his ideal would be to look at human history in such a way that the impulses present themselves as a world-effective imagination. It is not correct that the impulses present themselves in this way, but nevertheless Grimm has instinctively come up with a very curious fact. He first asks himself: What, for example, is Gibbon's way of presenting history? Gibbon wrote the history of the decline of the Roman Empire, and his way of looking at it can be compared to the [scientific] way of knowing of the present day [it is the application of knowledge of nature to history]. Gibbon describes the decline of the Roman Empire and all the forces that worked to bring about its downfall. He does not grasp what was an emerging impulse at the time, because he cannot grasp emerging impulses with the intellect and the scientific way of looking at things. Thus he can grasp only that which does not make historical life, but only that which has arisen when historical impulses have already expired.

But history is not written in this way; historical life is transformed into a corpse, because first the impulses on which it is based must be awakened and discovered. If history is to be understood as something living, then it cannot be grasped in terms of natural history. But Gibbon never succeeded in grasping something correctly like the rising forces of Christianity, which, as living forces, extend into the history of that time. Therefore, we must be clear about how to grasp real historical forces, and we see that we have to go back to what is subconscious in human life, what plays into the mind and will in the way I have presented it. Therefore, one can never grasp [what is fruitful in history] with the usual scientific method, nor the forces that lead to the practice of life, with which one can face life and with which one can judge: life has taught us this and this.

Only the observing consciousness, in which the new kind of knowledge is immersed, is what we call the only real way of looking at history, which will no longer say that different new states will be founded that may feud with each other but can no longer tear each other apart. This is also a prerequisite for history to provide a real basis for life. It must become so, because only in this way does history flow into our lives, the historical view flows into us. We see what really was through a real historical perspective, even if it is initially as inadequate as I have described it. One can grasp the spirit only by plunging into its depths, by seizing with clear light that which otherwise remains in the subconscious; otherwise one does not touch anything with the theory, as it is imitated by the natural-historical approach; with theory one does not penetrate into real life.

One can easily test the correctness of this assertion; just try it: put a pure theorist, an astute person who can think quite well about nature and the course of human knowledge, who is a good economist and social theorist, into life, and this is the best method to destroy what is good. This can be done with a theorist in social and ethical life and it will be seen: such theoretical minds work as destructive forces; they are capable of surveying life, but never of working fruitfully because their way of looking at things is not based on a correct view of history. And Lamprecht's view of history also confirms this view.

But how the type of knowledge meant here is submerged in the real impulses, I would like to show with an example. I know that it sounds extremely paradoxical when I say this, but I have said before: what Copernicus set out in his world view was also regarded as paradoxical and ridiculous. The world view reaches into those impulses that otherwise remain unconscious. For years I have pursued this idea in lectures and said that one would then come to a fruitful practical conception of history. But I will only hint at something in principle with two examples, which should lead a little further and which also reach into everyday life.

For those who look at history, the historical epoch that extends to the middle of the fifteenth century, but begins with the seventh or eighth century BC, is offered. It is remarkable that there is a similarity in the way the human soul is formed, how the human soul becomes social through mental powers that remain essentially the same from the seventh century BC to the mid-fifteenth century AD. Only then does a rapid change occur, but we do not notice it today because our attention is not focused on it and because some people live by the saying: Just as nature does not make leaps, so too does life. But that is not true, nature and life make leaps everywhere, we just do not notice how enormous they are, and we do not focus our attention on the great turning points of life.

If you do not penetrate into the great transformation, if you cannot see it, which occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century, then you also do not see the most important thing, you do not see the difference between these two ages, one of which is the one in which we are fully immersed and which will perhaps last another hundred years. The whole of human life between the seventh and eighth centuries BC and the fifteenth century AD is such that souls develop differently than in later times. I would like to say: in that older age, the human mind is developed much more instinctively, it therefore works more correctly, as a review of that time proves, and how everything was developed then, for example Roman law, which is still of great importance today.

Only if one knows which individual ideas emerged from Roman law, from the uniquely instinctive mind, will one also understand that at that time the mind worked in the soul [like a sense]. The social structure is also highly developed in Roman life with all its characters, and instinctive mind also worked during the decline of the Roman Empire.

It was only in the middle of the fifteenth century that reason began to operate in a different sense, that consciousness of reason began to operate in its own way. This age not only begins to carry a new psychic organization within itself, but it also develops it further, and thoughts are set with full awareness of the things.

We no longer understand anything of the inner impulses of those who lived at that time because we do not consider how the laws, state institutions and state formations of that time came about. It is therefore assumed that educated humanity, which is relevant for cultural development, no longer came to these institutions through the instinctive workings of the mind. But it is precisely when we consider this picture that the depth from which human activity arises becomes apparent, and when we follow the historical documents to study the human development of peoples and the laws they have created, then we can apply the conclusion to ourselves.

I will give another example, which covers an even longer period of time. It may also seem paradoxical, especially if I could give the details in question. But there is not enough time to point out what would result from research in spiritual science, and I can only briefly mention the results in general. The age that I have just described, which is still in contemporary history, is followed, going back from the seventh and eighth centuries, by another one in which the soul was in a completely different state, but which, according to research using the methods of spiritual science, covers a much longer period of time than can be documented by our records. We come to a different epoch from the one I have just characterized, which begins with the seventh and eighth centuries BC and ends in the middle of the fifteenth century. If we look at the events of this earlier epoch from a spiritual scientific point of view, as far back as we can trace the time with our eyes and with a seeing consciousness, we come to a time that was very significant in many respects.

Today, in the sense of the old method of developmental theory, research is being conducted into historical application, which is expressed in the attempt to create an analogue. One looks at the progress of historical development, the progress of humanity [as an organism], one compares what took place in prehistoric times with infancy, later times with adolescence, and then, when you apply it from the earlier time to the present time, you come to say how we have “come so gloriously far” and how we have developed our minds compared to our ancestors. But all these analogies fall apart when we look at them through the lens of spiritual science. For then it becomes clear that people in the earlier periods of human development faced life in a completely different way than they do today.

Scientific theory has brought with it many errors and, above all, has created a certain prejudice with regard to the historical development of humanity. And no attention is paid to how the human soul has changed over time, how it has taken on a different form over the centuries. What people had in earlier times is regarded as if it all came from soul impulses that are always the same. If you believe this, you don't know how the human soul has changed, which was connected to human life in a completely different way back then. Today we only know of such a connection in the youth and childhood of a person. We know how the soul is closely connected with the development of life and how what is called spiritual development often depends on the historical course of life. But by the twentieth year this ceases for the human being; the close connection that can be scientifically traced [of the spiritual-soul with the development of the physical-bodily] ceases, and the spirit begins to develop, and this period then comes to an end by the twentieth year.

It was quite different in the early days of humanity. There were times in the history of humanity, which I have already mentioned, when the human soul remained spiritually connected to the body, quite unlike today. One result of spiritual research is that, during their lifetime, people remained dependent on bodily consciousness, except for the way they experience bodily processes, and today we are discovering certain events in human history from which we can still see today that certain ideas, which have not been examined in literary history, but which resonate in some old sages, have retained their old originality.

Then comes the second age, which can be compared with the age of man up to the age of forty, but this is already the age which has already adopted a definite culture and of which we know that the people of that time were already dependent on many conditions of life, which penetrate into their lives as ideas. And here we come to the human age, which begins with the seventh to eighth century BC; people experience the forces of the body until the age of forty, which now already allows our individuality to decline from the age of 35 onwards. If this [Greco-Roman] period is not only considered from an external point of view, but is studied in depth, we find that it is based on the fact that man experiences life with his consciousness, whether this occurs in the course of history or in the life of an individual, up to the age of forty, when external circumstances influence the spiritual life. Today, we no longer achieve this; we only experience fully up to the age of 27 or 28.

Thus history, if we follow the historical life, shows us, one might say in a few words, that humanity as such is becoming ever younger. But this means a great deal for a correct understanding of the life of humanity. At first, humanity became so old that it, as peoples, experienced in common what happens in human life up to the age of thirty, and only then came the younger age. Today, humanity lives a much younger age throughout life than in the past, and therein lies the real power that seems incomprehensible, and also the processes of human history, which seem to want to be incomprehensible to us, such as Roman law or the Greek world view, art and the social life of that time, which correspond to a much older age.

We find it understandable, however, when we know that the human experience in his soul was quite different then and that man today can no longer experience the same. Today, man is dependent on grasping with his soul that which life no longer gives him, and since the middle of the fifteenth century, man has been confronted with the necessity of grasping with the consciousness of the intellect that which life no longer gives man and which cannot be found through the inner impulses of the soul. That is why we only now understand how we have to reach into the reality of the soul's life in order to grasp the connections.

I have only characterized the general aspects in general; one can also pick out only the everyday events and then see the individual events in this light. But the picture of what is spreading around us and what I have characterized also emerges in a very strange way. We look to the Asian East, to Rabindranath Tagore, how he understands the spirit and how he views the history of the Indians and the Japanese people. He wants the old roots to remain, and does not want the foreign spirit to enter, which is different from the old spirit and enters after the period that ends with the age from the seventh to the eighth century. Nevertheless, he is a fine spiritual man of the Orient, and despite the fact that he has absorbed everything that the object itself can offer, with all its sympathies and impulses, he has his own point of view in his understanding of tradition.

If we look more closely, we see that life today has forged a common bond across the whole earth, despite the different worldviews that often clash and interfere with each other. We also see minds like Lamprecht and Grimm wrestling with what has been developing as individuals since the fifteenth century and seems more and more alive from year to year. These are the driving impulses for our spiritual and moral approach. The humanities scholar does not need to create new concepts; he finds the concepts that can be applied to the age in which we live. He is also not looking for new ideals, for fantasies; he is only seeking to grasp that in which he can truly immerse himself, and he knows that human coexistence must develop. But we say to ourselves with regard to the Orient: there is something at work that we are not allowed to participate in, because we would not get along if we thought we could imitate it in Central Europe. What occurs in the Orient and in our regions is quite different, and one understands it only if one can grasp it in the way described. But then one must say: it is as if someone develops from childhood to the age of thirty. And only from this point of view can one understand it if one wants to face these realities.

But what we encounter in America is a kind of anticipation of a state, as if a child were senile, that is, a state that is quite good for later in life but not in youth, when it is an unhealthy state; and therefore, what works in the sense of this perspective will only be conscious in his head, to which life is not actually connected. Wilson's restless eye can be compared to the calm gaze of Herman Grimm, in which the calmness of the soul is expressed, emerging from within, moving from experience to experience and connecting everything with its own breath. When a person is possessed by his inner being, then the eye does not become calm, then everything he says becomes apt, forceful. What is to be developed out of the spirit is developed out of the body. We must pay attention to this difference, we must see it if we want to understand our soul and ethical and historical work, especially in today's difficult times, when we shape through direct experiences of other soul impressions on the historical ground and create social connections. We certainly cannot accept what is Asian, nor what is American, even though it must be understood.

The European nations could also be characterized, but one must delve below the surface, and then only can one extract what are the historical impulses from those forces that otherwise work unconsciously. But if one recognizes this, then one will also have real historical considerations that give people maturity for life. And when that happens, then such discussions will no longer be considered paradoxical, and one will really have something from history that can work in one's life. Placed in life, one will be able to say that one has grown to meet the demands of one's position by being able to see life from true and full reality and not just from the surface.

It is remarkable that Goethe was the first to coin the phrase about the value of history in awakening enthusiasm. But he only wanted to describe the concept with it, because the soul concepts are not given from history, but are brought forth from the unconscious depths. However, since they are instinctive, they enter the emotional life only to sink back down into feelings and impulses; and enthusiasm will again be able to arise from that which has been seen through a true historical method of observation, and then, through feeling enthusiasm and through a true historical method of observation, we will face life for the first time. I know that today this way of looking at history sounds highly paradoxical to many, and that most people do not agree with the conclusion that correct social thinking and ethical action can arise from such a consideration, which is based on the historical consideration of the seeing consciousness. I know that today we are seen as fantasists, whose way of thinking cannot yet be easily grasped.

But I would like to ask a question: how many people before the fourteenth century could have imagined, based on the concepts of the time, that our Earth would experience such a movement as we know today? No one who lived at that time knew. We now look at many things differently, since we can see the big picture, and in the near future we will be able to see much more. This will happen often in human life, and our view of things will broaden. We will have to take into account our old sympathies and antipathies and we will see that everything that has befallen humanity will be balanced out when we understand what humanity wants, and that this cannot be linked to the way we have thought up to now.

It is important that people learn this so that humanity can develop forward. People must learn new perceptions, ideas and concepts, especially new thinking, which balances out with the earlier concepts and ideas. The former may already be the only decisive thing for some people today, but the latter will be the important thing, because it will reach into the future and be fundamental for life and it will found our life for the future. Therefore, I believe that actions will arise from such considerations and that some may still come to ideas and feelings that are still considered paradoxical, perhaps even strange, today, but which will later, albeit reluctantly, be recognized. People will come to the conclusion that we have to learn anew from one day to the next and have to familiarize ourselves with a new way of thinking, feeling and willing for the near future, in order to be able to settle into this time.

When, some three years ago, at the request of a group of friends who were disturbed by the social aftermath of the Great War, I published my book The Threefold Commonwealth, the immediate result, from my point of view, was the profound misunderstanding it met with on every side. This was because it was promptly classed among the writings that have attempted, in a more or less Utopian manner, to advocate institutions which their creators envisaged as a sort of nostrum against the chaotic social conditions thrown up in the course of man's recent development. My book was intended not as a call for reflection about possible institutions, but as a direct appeal to human nature. It could not have been otherwise, given the fundamentals of spiritual science, as will be apparent from the whole tone of my lectures so far.

In many cases, for example, what I included solely to illustrate the central argument was taken to be my main point. In order to demonstrate how mankind could achieve social thinking and feeling and a social will, I gave as an example the way the circulation of capital might be transformed so that it would no longer be felt by many people to be oppressive, as frequently happens at present. I had to say one or two things about the price mechanism, the value of labour, and so on. All this solely by way of illustration. Anyone who seeks to influence human life as a whole must surely hearken to it first, in order to derive from it the human remedies for its aberrations, instead of extolling a few stereotyped formulae and recommending their indiscriminate application.

For anyone who has reacted to the social life of Europe in the last thirty or forty years, not with some preconceived attitude or other but with an open mind, it is clear above all that what is needed in the social sphere today is already prefigured in the unconscious will of mankind in Europe. Everywhere we find these unconscious tendencies. They exist already in men's souls, and all that is needed is to put them into words.

That is what made me give in to my friends and write the book I have mentioned. My purpose was to attempt, out of the sense of reality which—in all modesty we can say this—spiritual science instils in man, to observe what has been going on in Europe in recent years, beneath the surface of events and institutions, among all ranks and classes of society. What I wanted to say was not: I think that this or that is correct, but rather: This or that is secretly desired by the unconscious, and all that is required is for us to become conscious of the direction in which mankind is really trying to go. The reason for many of our social abuses today is precisely that this unconscious movement contradicts in part what mankind has worked out intellectually and embodied in institutions. Our institutions, in fact, run counter to what men today desire in the depths of their hearts.

There is another reason why I do not believe there is any real point today in simply advocating some particular Utopian institution. In the historical development of mankind in the civilized world we have entered a phase where any judgment about relationships among and between men, however shrewd, can be of no significance unless men accept it—unless it is something towards which they are themselves impelled, though for the most part unconsciously.

If we wish to reflect at all upon these things at the present time, therefore, I believe we must reckon with the democratic mood which has emerged in the course of man's history, and which now exists in the depths of men's souls—the democratic feeling that something is really valuable in the social sphere only if it aims, not at saying democratic things, but at enabling men to express their own opinions and put them over. My main concern was thus to answer the question: Under what conditions are men really in a position to give expression to their opinions and their will in social matters?

When we consider the world around us from a social standpoint, we cannot help concluding that, although it would be easy to point to a great deal that should be different, the obstacles to change are legion, so that what we may know perfectly well and be perfectly willing to put into practice, cannot be realized! There are differences of rank and class, and the gulfs between classes. These gulfs cannot be bridged simply by having a theory of how to bridge them; they result from the fact that—as I stressed so much yesterday—the will, which is the true centre of man's nature, is involved in the way we have grown into our rank or class or any other social grouping. And again, if you look for the obstacles which, in recent times, with their complicated economic conditions, have ranged themselves alongside the prejudices, feelings and impulses of class consciousness, you will find them in economic institutions themselves. We are born into particular economic institutions and cannot escape from them. And there also exists, I would say, a third kind of obstacle to true social co-operation among men; for those who might perhaps, as leaders, be in a position to exert that profound influence of which I have been speaking, have other limitations—limitations that derive from certain dogmatic teachings and feelings about life. While many men cannot escape from economic limitations and limitations of class, many others cannot rise above their conceptual and intellectual limitations. All this is already widespread in life and results in a great deal of confusion.

If, however, we now attempt to reach a clear understanding of everything which, through these obstacles and gulfs, has affected the unconscious depths of men's souls in recent decades, we become aware that in fact the essentials of the social problem are not by any means located where they are usually looked for. They reside in the fact that there has arisen in the recent development of civilized man, alongside the technology which is so complicating life, a faith in the supreme power of the monolithic state. This faith became stronger and stronger as the nineteenth century wore on. It became so strong and so fixed that it has never been shaken even in the face of the many shattering verdicts on the organization of society that multitudes of people have reached.

With this dogmatic faith that thus takes hold of men, something else is associated. Through their faith, people seek to cling to the proposition that the object of their faith represents a kind of sovereign remedy, enabling them to decide which is the best political system, and also—I will not say to conjure up paradise, but at least to believe that they are creating the best institutions conceivable.

This attitude, however, leaves out of account something that obtrudes itself particularly on those who observe life realistically, as it has been observed here in the last few days. Anyone who, just because he is compelled to mould his ideas to the spiritual world, acquires a true sense of reality, will discover that the best institutions that can be devised for a particular period never remain valid beyond that period and that what is true of man's natural organism is also true of the social organism.

I am not going to play the boring game of analogies, but by way of illustration I should like to indicate what can be discovered about society from a study of the human organism. We can never say that the human organism—or, for that matter, the animal or plant—will display only an upward development. If organisms are to flourish and to develop their powers from within themselves, they must also be capable of ageing and of dying off. Anyone who studies the human organism in detail finds that this atrophying is going on at every moment. Forces of ascent, growth and maturation are present continuously; but so too are the forces of decomposition. And man owes a great deal to them. To overcome materialism completely, he must direct his attention to just these forces of decomposition in the human organism. He must seek, everywhere in the human organ, ism, the points at which matter is disintegrating as a result of the process of organization. And he will find that the development of man's spiritual life is closely linked to the disintegration of matter. We can only understand the human organism by perceiving, side by side with the forces of ascent, growth and maturation, the continuous process of decay.

I have given this simply by way of illustration, but it really does illustrate what the impartial observer will discover in the social organism too. It is true that the social organism does not die, and to this extent it differs from the human organism; but it changes, and forces of advancement and decline are inherent in it. You can only comprehend the social organism when you know that, even if you put into practice the wisest designs and establish, in a given area of social life, something that has been learnt from conditions as they really are, it will after a time reveal moribund forces, forces of decline, because men with their individual personalities are active in it. What is correct for a given year will have changed so greatly, twenty years later, that it will already contain the seeds of its own decline. This sort of thing, it is true, is often appreciated, in an abstract way. But in this age of intellectualism, people do not go beyond abstractions, however much they may fancy themselves as practical thinkers. People in general, we thus discover, may admit that the social organism contains forces of dissolution and decline, that it must always be in process of transformation, and that forces of decline must always operate alongside the constructive ones. Yet at the point where these people affect the social order through their intentions and volition, they do not recognize in practice what they have admitted in theory.

Thus, in the social order that existed before the Great War, you could see that, whenever capitalism formed part of an upward development, it resulted in a certain satisfaction even for the masses. When in any branch of life capitalism was expanding, wages rose. As the process advanced further and further, therefore, and capitalism was able to operate with increasing freedom, you could see that wages and opportunities for the employment of labour rose steadily. But it was less noticed that this upward movement contained at the same time other social factors, which move in a parallel direction and involve the appearance of forces of decline. Thus with rising wages, for instance, conditions of life would be such that the rising wages themselves would gradually create a situation in which the standard of life was in fact raised relatively little. Such things were, of course, noticed, but not with any lively and practical awareness of the social currents involved.

Hence today, when we stand at a milestone in history, it is the fundamentals, not the surface phenomena of social life that we must consider. And so we are led to the distinct branches that go to make up our social life.

One of these is the spiritual life of mankind. This spiritual life—though we cannot, of course, consider it in isolation from the rest of social life—has its own determinants, which are connected with human personalities. The spiritual life draws its nourishment from the human individuals active in any period, and all the rest of social life depends on this. Consider the changes that have occurred in many social spheres simply because someone or other has made some invention or discovery. But when you ask: How did this invention or discovery come about? then you have to look into the depths of men's souls. You see how they have undergone a certain development and have been led to find, in the stillness of their rooms, so to speak, something that afterwards transformed broad areas of social life. Ask yourselves what is the significance, for social life as a whole, of the fact that the differential and integral calculus was discovered by Leibniz. If from this standpoint you consider realistically the influence of spiritual life on social life, you will come to see that, because spiritual life has its own determinants, it represents a distinctive branch of social life as a whole.

If asked to define its special quality, we would say: Everything that is really to flourish in the spiritual life of mankind must spring from man's innermost productive power. And we inevitably find that the elements that develop freely in the depths of the human soul are what is most favourable for social life as a whole.

We are, however, also affected by another factor, one that has become increasingly apparent in recent decades. It is the impulse—subsequently absorbed into a faith in the omnipotence of political life—for civilized humanity, out of the depths of its being, to become more and more democratic. In other words, aspirations are present in the masses of humanity for every human being to have a voice in determining human institutions. This democratic trend may be sympathetic or unsympathetic to us—that is not a matter of primary importance. What matters is that the trend has shown itself to be a real force in the history of modern man. But in looking at this democratic trend, we are particularly struck, if our thinking is realistic, by the way in which, out of an inner pressure, out of the spiritual life of Middle Europe ideas evolved, in the noblest minds, about the political community of men.

I do not mean to suggest that today we must still attach any special value to the “closed commercial state” put forward by one of the noblest of Germans. We need pay attention less to the content of Fichte's thought than to his noble purpose. I should, however, like to emphasize the emergence in a very popular form, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, of what we may call the search for concepts of natural law. At that time, certain eminent and high-minded men devoted themselves to the question: What is the relation of man to man? And what in general is man's innermost essence, socially speaking? They believed that, by a right understanding of man, they would also be able to find what is the law for men. They called this “the law of reason” or “natural law.” They believed that they could work out rationally which are the best legal institutions, the ones under which men can best prosper. You need only look at Rotteck's work to see how the idea of natural law still operated for many writers in the first half of the nineteenth century.

In opposition to this, however, there emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century in Europe the historical school of law. This was inspired by the conviction that you cannot determine the law among men by a process of reason.

Yet this historical school of law failed to notice what it is that really makes any excogitation of a rational law unfruitful; they failed to see that, under the influence of the age of intellectualism, a certain sterility had invaded the spiritual life of mankind. Instead, the opponents of natural law concluded that men are not competent to discover, from within their souls, anything about law, and that therefore law must be studied historically. You must look, they said, at man's historical development, and see how, from customs and instinctive relationships, systems of law have resulted.

The historical study of law? Against such a study Nietzsche's independent spirit rebelled in On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. He believed that, if we are always looking solely at what has exercised mankind historically, we cannot be productive and evolve fruitful ideas for the present; the elemental forces that live in man must revolt against the historical sense, in order that, from these forces, there may develop a constitution of social relationships.

Among leading personalities there developed in the nineteenth century, at the height of intellectualism, a battle over the real foundations of law. And this also involved a battle over the foundations of the state. At least, it was generally assumed so at the time. For the state is, ultimately, no more than the sum total of the individual institutions in which the forces of law reside. The fact that the ability to detect the foundations of law had been lost also meant, therefore, that it was no longer possible to attain clarity about the real nature of the state. That is why we find—not simply in theory, but in real life as well—that, during the nineteenth century, the essence of the state became, for countless people, including the masses, a problem that they had to solve.

Yet this applied more particularly, I would say, to the upper and more conscious reaches of civilized humanity. From underground, the democratic attitude I have described was tunnelling its way towards the surface. Its appearance, if properly understood, leads us to conceive the problem of the nature of law in a way that is much deeper and much closer to reality than is usual today. There are many people today who think it self-evident that, from within the individual, you can somehow arrive at what is actually the law in a given sphere. Modern jurists, it is true, soon lose sight of the ground when they attempt to do so; and what they find, when they philosophize in this way or indeed think they are reflecting in a practical way upon life, is that law loses its content for them and becomes an empty form. And then they say: This empty form must be given a content; the economic element must be decanted into it.

On the one hand, then, there exists a definite sense of man's powerlessness to reach a concept or feeling of law from within himself. On the other hand, we do continually attempt to derive the nature of law from man himself. And yet the democratic attitude jibs at any such attempt. What it says is that there is no such thing as a general abstract determination of law; there is only the possibility that the members of a particular community may reach an understanding and say to one another: “You want this from me, I want that from you,” and that they will then come to some agreement about their resulting relations. Here, law springs exclusively from the reality of what men desire from one another. There cannot therefore be any such thing as a law of reason; and the “historical law” that has come into being can always do so again if only we find the right foundation for it. On this foundation, men can enter into a relationship in which, through mutual understanding, they can evolve a realistic law. “I want to have my say when law is being made”—so speaks the democratic attitude. Anyone, then, who wishes to write theoretically about the nature of law cannot spin it out of himself; he just has to look at the law that appears among men, and record it. In natural science too, our view of the phenomenal world does not allow us to fashion the laws of nature out of our head; we allow things to speak to us and shape natural laws accordingly. We assume that what we try to encompass in the laws of nature is already created, but that what exists in the legal sphere has to be created among men. This is a different stage of life. In this realm, man stands in the position of creator—but as a social being, alongside other men—so that a life may come about that shall infuse the meaning of human evolution into the social order. This is precisely the democratic spirit.

The third thing that presents itself to people today and calls for social reorganization is the complicated economic pattern which has developed in recent times, and which I need not describe, since it has been accurately described by many people. We can only say: This economic pattern certainly results from factors quite different from those controlling the other two fields of the social organism—spiritual life, where all that is fruitful in the social order must spring from the individual human personality (only the creativity of the individual can make the right contribution here to the social order as a whole), and the sphere of law, where law, and with it the body politic, can only derive from an understanding between men. Both factors—the one applicable to spiritual life and the other to political and legal life—are absent from economic life.

In economic life, what may come about cannot be determined by the individual. In the nineteenth century, when intellectualism enjoyed such a vogue among men, we can see how various important people—I do not say this ironically—people in the most varied walks of life, gave their opinion about one thing and another—people who were well placed in economic life, and whose judgment one would have expected to trust. When they came to express an opinion about something outside their own speciality, something that affected legislation, you often found that what they said, about the practical effect of the gold standard for example, was significant and sensible. If you follow what went on in the various economic associations during the period when certain countries were going over to the gold standard, you will be astonished at the amount of common sense that was generated. But when you go further and examine how the things that had been prophesied then developed, you will see, for instance, that some very important person or other considered that, under the influence of the gold standard, customs barriers would disappear! The exact opposite occurred!

The fact is that, in the economic sphere, common sense, which can help one a very great deal in the spiritual sphere, is not always a safe guide. You gradually discover that, as far as economic life is concerned, the individual cannot reach valid judgments at all. Judgments here can only be arrived at collectively, through the co-operation of many people in very different walks of life. It is not just theory, but something that will have to become practical wisdom, that truly valid judgments here can arise only from the consonance of many voices.

The whole of social life thus falls into three distinct fields. In that of spiritual life, it is for the individual to speak. In the democratic sphere of law, it is for all men to speak, since what matters here is the relationship of man to man on a basis of simple humanity—where any human being can express a view. In the sphere of economic life, neither the judgment of the individual, nor that which flows from the un-sifted judgments of all men, is possible. In this sphere, the individual contributes, to the whole, expert knowledge and experience in his own particular field; and then, from associations, a collective judgment can emerge in the proper manner. It can do so only if the legitimate judgments of individuals can rub shoulders with one another. For this, however, the associations must be so constituted as to contain views that can rub shoulders and then produce a collective judgment.—The whole of social life, therefore, falls into these three regions. This is not deduced from some Utopian notion, but from a realistic observation of life.

At the same time, however—and this must be emphasized over and over again—the social organism, whether small or large, contains within itself, together with constructive forces, also the forces of decline. Thus everything that we feed into social life also contains its own destructive forces. A constant curative process is needed in the social organism.

When we look at spiritual life from this standpoint, we can even say, on the lines of the observations put forward here in the last few days: in Oriental society, the life of the spirit was universally predominant. All individual phenomena—even those in political and in economic life—derived from the impulses of spiritual life, in the way I have been describing. If now you consider the functioning of society, you find that for a given period—every period is different—there flow forth from the life of the spirit impulses that inform the social structures; economic associations come into being on the basis of ideas from spiritual life, and the state founds institutions out of spiritual life. But you can also see that spiritual life has a constant tendency to develop forces of decline, or forces from which such forces of decline can arise. If we could see spiritual life in its all-powerful ramifications, we should perceive how it constantly impels men to separate into ranks and classes. And if you study the reasons for the powerful hold of the caste system in the Orient, you will find that it is regarded as a necessary concomitant of the fact that society sprang from spiritual impulses. Thus we see that Plato still stresses how, in the ideal state, humanity must be divided into the producer class, the scholar class and the warrior class—must be divided, that is, into classes. If you analyse the reasons for this, you will find that differences of rank and class follow from the gradation which is implicit in the supreme power of spiritual life. Within the classes, there then appears once more the sense of human personality, which experiences them as prejudicial to the social system. There thus always exist, within spiritual life, opportunities for the appearance of gulfs between classes, ranks, even castes.

We now turn to the field of politics, and it is here especially that we must look for what I have been calling the subjection of labour, in the course of man's development, to the unitary social organism. It is precisely because theocracy, coming from Asia, developed into a political system that is now dominated by concepts of law, that the problem of labour arises. In so far as each individual was to attain his rights, there developed a demand for labour to be properly integrated into society. Yet as law cast off its links with religion and moved further and further towards democracy, there insinuated itself more and more into men's lives a certain formalized element of social thinking.

Law developed in fact from what one individual has to say to another. It cannot be spun out of a man's own reasoning faculty. Yet from the mutual intercourse of men's reasoning faculties—if I may so put it—a true life of law arises. Law is inclined, therefore, towards logic and formalized thought. But humanity, on its way down the ages, goes through phases of one-sided development. It went through the one-sided phase we call theocracy, and similarly, later on, it goes through the one we call the state. When it does so, the logical element of social life is cultivated—the element of excogitation. Just think how much human ratiocination has been expended on law in the course of history!

In consequence of this, however, mankind also proceeds towards the capacity for abstraction. You can sense how human thinking, under the influence of the principle of law, becomes increasingly abstract. What mankind acquires in one sphere, however, is extended at certain periods to the whole of human life. In this way, I would say, even religion was, as I have indicated earlier, absorbed into the juridical current. The God of the Orient, universal legislator and giver of Grace to men, became a God of judgment. Universal law in the cosmos became universal justice. We see this especially in the Middle Ages. As a result, however, there was imported into men's habits of thought and feeling a kind of abstraction. People tried increasingly to run their lives by means of abstractions.

In this way, abstraction came to extend to religion and spiritual life, on the one hand, and economic life, on the other. Men began to trust more and more in the omnipotence of the state, with its abstract administrative and constitutional activity. Increasingly, men regarded it as progressive for spiritual life, in the shape of education, to be absorbed completely into the sphere of the state. Here, however, it could not avoid being caught up in abstract relationships, such as are associated with the law. Economic activity, too, was absorbed into something that was felt to be appropriate when the state is in control. And at the time when the modern concept of the economy was formed, it was the general opinion that the state should be the power above all which determined the proper organization of economic activity. In this way, however, we subject the other branches of life to the rule of abstraction. This statement itself may sound abstract, but in fact it is realistic. Let me demonstrate this with regard to education.

In our age, where common sense is so commonplace, men can come together in a committee, in order to work out the best pedagogic procedures. When they meet together in this way and work out how education should be organized and just what should be covered by this class or the other in the timetable, they will—and I say this without irony—work out first-rate things. I am convinced that, so long as they are fairly sensible—and most people are nowadays—they will draw up ideal programmes. We live—or did live at least, for some attempt is being made to escape—in the age of planning. There is certainly no shortage of programmes, of guiding principles in any given area of life! Society after society is founded and draws up its programme: a thing is to be done in this way or that. I have no objection to these programmes, and indeed I am convinced that no one who criticizes them could draw up better ones. But that is not the point. What we work out, we can impose on reality; only reality will not then be suitable for men to live in. And that is what really matters.

And so we have reached a kind of dead end in the matter of programmes. We have seen recently how, with the best and noblest of intentions for the development of mankind, a man drew up one of these programmes for the entire civilized world, in fourteen admirable points. It was shattered immediately it came into contact with reality. From the fate of Wilson's fourteen abstract points—which were the product of shrewd intellects, but were not in accordance with reality, not quarried from life itself—an enormous amount can be learnt.

In education and teaching, it is not programmes that matter, for they after all are only a product of politics and law. You can, with the best of intentions, issue a directive that this or that must be done; in reality, however, we are dealing with a staff composed of teachers with a particular set of capacities. You have to take these capacities into account in a vital way. You cannot realize a programme. Only what springs from the individual personalities of the teachers can be realized. You must have a feeling for these personalities. You will need to decide afresh, each day, out of the immediate life of the individual, what is to happen. You will not be able to set up a comprehensive programme: this remains an abstraction. Only out of life itself can something be created. Let us imagine an extreme case: In some subject or other, there are available only teachers of mediocre ability. If, at a time when they were free of teaching and had nothing to do but think, these teachers were to work out pedagogic aims and issue regulations, even they would no doubt come up with something extremely sensible. But the actual business of teaching is another thing altogether; all that matters there is their capabilities as whole men. It is one thing to reckon with what derives solely from the intellect, and quite another to reckon with life itself. For the intellect has the property of overreaching; fundamentally, it is always seeking to encompass the boundless nature of the world. In real life, it should remain a tool in a specific concrete activity.

Now if we reflect particularly on the fact that what takes place between human beings, when they confront each other as equals, can turn into law—then we must say: The things humanity develops are all right when they are the outcome of contemporary abstraction; for that is how men do feel. Men establish legal relations with one another, based on certain abstract concepts of man, and they arrive at these legal relations through the circumstance that they stand together on democratic ground. Yet it will never be possible in this way to create for the whole of humanity something that springs directly from the life of the individual; but only what is common to the whole of humanity. In other words: to be quite honest, there cannot well up, from a democratic foundation, what ought to spring from the individuality of man within spiritual life.

We must, of course, realize that a belief in the predominance of law and politics was a historical phenomenon, and that it was historically legitimate for modern states, at the time when they came into being, to take over responsibility for the schools, since they had to take them away from other authorities who were no longer administering them properly. You should not try to correct history retrospectively. Yet we must also perceive clearly that in recent years there has developed a movement to shape the life of the spirit once again as something independent, so that it contains within itself its own social structure and its own administration; and also that what takes place in individual classes can stem from the vital life of the teacher and not from adherence to some regulation or other. Despite the fact that it has been regarded as a step forward to hand over spiritual life, and with it schools, to the state, we must make up our minds to reverse this trend. Only then will it be possible for the free human personality to achieve expression within spiritual life, including the sphere of education. Nor need anyone be afraid that authority would suffer in consequence! Where a productive influence is exercised by the human personality, the individuals concerned yearn for a natural authority. We can see this at work in the Waldorf School. Everyone there is pleased when one person or the other can be his authority, because he needs what the individual talents of that person have to offer.

It then remains possible for politics and law to function on a democratic basis.

Here again, however, the fact is that, simply through its tendency to abstractness, the state contains within itself the germ of what are later to become forces of decline. Anyone who studies how, by virtue of the existence of this tendency, what men do in the political and legal sphere cannot help becoming increasingly cut off from any concrete interest in a particular aspect of life, will also realize that it is precisely political life which provides the basis for the abstractness that has become increasingly apparent in connection with the circulation of capital. The formation of capital nowadays is much criticized by the masses. But the campaign against it, as conducted at present, reveals an ignorance of the true situation. Anyone who wanted to abolish capital or capitalism would have to abolish modern economic and social life as a whole, because this social life cannot survive without the division of labour, and this in turn implies the formation of capital. In recent times, this has been demonstrated particularly by the fact that a large part of capital is represented by the means of production. The essential point, however, is that in the first place capitalism is a necessary feature of modern life, while on the other hand, precisely when it becomes nationalized, it leads to the divorce of money from specific concrete activities. In the nineteenth century, this was carried so far that now what actually circulates in social life is as completely divorced from specific concrete activities, as the bloodless ideas of a thinker who lives only in abstractions are divorced from real life. The economic element that is thus divorced from specific activities is money. When I have a certain sum in my pocket, this sum can represent any given object in the economy or even in spiritual life. This element stands in the same relation to specific concrete activities as a wholly general concept does to specific experiences. That is why crises must inevitably arise within the social order.

These crises have been extensively studied. A theory of crises is prominent in Marxism, for example. The mistake lies in attributing the crises to a single chain of causes, whereas in fact they are due to two underlying trends. There may be too much capital, in which case the excess that is circulating gives rise to crises. It may also happen, however, that too little capital is available, and this also leads to crises. These are two different types of crisis. Such things are not examined objectively, even by political economists today. The fact is that, in the real world, a single phenomenon may have very varied causes.

We can see, therefore, that, just as spiritual life tends to develop forces of decline arising from differences of class, rank and caste, so too the life that is moving towards abstractions—and rightly so—includes a tendency, on the one hand to develop the constructive forces that are part of a legitimate formation of capital, but on the other hand to give rise to crises because capitalism results in abstract economic activity, in which a capital sum can be used indifferently for one purpose or another.

When people realize this, they become social reformers and work out something that is designed to produce a cure. But now you come up against the fact that, although the individual does shape economic life by contributing his experiences through the appropriate associations, he cannot as a single individual determine the shape of economic life. That is why, when we go beyond the political and legal and the spiritual spheres, I have posited the association as a necessity of economic life.

In this connection, I was struck by the fact that, when I was speaking in Germany to a fairly small group of working-men about associations, they said to me: We have heard of very many things, but we don't really know what associations are; we haven't really heard anything about them. An association is not an organization and not a combination. It comes into being through the conflux of the individuals within the economy. The individual does not have to adopt something handed out from a central body, but is able to contribute the knowledge and ability he has in his own field. From a collaboration in which each gives of his best, and where what is done springs from the agreement of many—only from such associations does economic life in general derive.

Associations of this kind will come into being. They are certain to arise, I have no doubt of that. To anyone who tells me this is Utopian, my reply is: I know that these associations spring only from subconscious forces in man. We can, however, foster them by the reason and make them arise more quickly, or we can wait until they arise from necessity. They will link together those engaged in production and commerce, and the consumers. Only production, distribution and consumption will have any part in them. Labour will come more and more under the aegis of law. On the question of labour, men must reach an understanding in a democratic manner. In consequence, labour will be insulated from the only force which can be effective in economic life—that which is the resultant of a collective judgment in associations linking producers and consumers, together with distributors.

In the sphere of economic life, therefore—in the associations—goods alone will have a part to play. This will, in turn, have an important consequence: we shall cease entirely to have any fixed notions of the price and value of an article. Instead, we shall say: the price and value of an article is something that changes with the surrounding circumstances. Price and value will be set by the collective judgment of the associations. I cannot go into this at length here; but you can follow it up in my book The Threefold Commonwealth.

I have been trying to outline how, from our observation, we become aware that social life falls into three regions, shaped by quite distinct and different factors: spiritual life, legal and political life, and economic life. Within the recent development of civilization, these three have been achieving some degree of independence. To understand this independence, and gradually to allocate to each field what belongs to it, so that they may collaborate in an appropriate manner, is the important task today.

Men have reflected in very different ways on this tripartite articulation of the social organism. And, as my Threefold Commonwealth began to attract attention here and there, people pointed out various things in it that were already foreshadowed by earlier writers. Now I do not wish to raise the question of priority at all. What matters is not whether it was a particular individual who discovered something, but how it can become established in life. If a lot of people were to hit on it, one would be only too pleased. One point must be noted, however: when Montesquieu in France outlines a sort of tripartite division of the social organism, it is merely a division. He points out that the three sections have quite different determinants, and that we must therefore keep them separate. This is not the tenor of my book. I do not try to distinguish spiritual life, legal life and economic life, in the way that you would distinguish in man the nervous system, the respiratory system and the metabolic system, if at the same time you wanted to insist that they are three systems, each separate from the other. In itself, such a division leads nowhere; you can advance only by seeing how these three different systems function together, and how they best combine into a single whole by each operating on its own terms. The same is true of the social organism. When we know how to establish spiritual life, political and legal life, and economic life on the terms that are native to each, and how to let them run off their native sources of power, then the unity of the social organism will also follow. And then you will find that certain forces of decline are released within each of these fields, but that they are countered through collaboration with other fields. This suggests, not a tripartite division of the social organism, as in Montesquieu, but a threefold articulation of it, which yet comes together in the unity of the social organism as a whole, by virtue of the fact that, after all, every individual belongs to all three regions. The human personality—and that is what is all-important—inhabits this triform social organism in such a way as to unite the three parts.

Especially in the light of what I have been saying, then, we find that what we must aim at is not a division but an articulation of the social organism, in order that a satisfying unity may be attained. And in a more superficial way, you can also see that, for over a century, mankind in Europe has tended to seek such an articulation. It will come about, even if men do not consciously desire it; unconsciously, they will so conduct themselves, in the economic, spiritual, and political and legal spheres, that it will come about. It is demanded by the actual evolution of humanity.

And we can also point to the fact that the impulses which correspond to these three different aspects of life entered European civilization at a particular moment in the shape of three quintessential ideals, three maxims for social life. At the end of the eighteenth century in Western Europe, a demand spread abroad for liberty, equality and fraternity. Is there anyone who bears with the development that has taken place in modern times, who would deny that these maxims contain three quintessential human ideals? Yet on the other hand it must be admitted that there were many people in the nineteenth century who argued ingeniously against the view that a unified social organism or state can exist if it has to realize these three ideals all together. Several persuasive books were written to demonstrate that liberty, equality and fraternity cannot be completely and simultaneously combined within the state. And one must admit that these ingenious arguments do evoke a certain scepticism. In consequence, people once again found themselves face to face with a contradiction imposed by life itself.

Yet it is not the nature of life to avoid contradictions; life is contradictory at every point. It involves the repeated reconciliation of the contradictions that are thrown up. It is in the propagation and reconciliation of contradictions that life consists. It is, therefore, absolutely right that the three great ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity should have been put forward. Because it was believed in the nineteenth century, however, and right down to our own times, that everything must be centrally organized, people went off the rails. They failed to perceive that it is of no importance to argue about the way in which the means of production be employed, capitalism developed, etc. What matters is to enable men to arrange their social system to accord with the innermost impulses of their being. And in this connection we must say: We need to comprehend, in a vital way, how liberty should function in spiritual life, as the free and productive development of the personality; how equality should function in the political and legal sphere, where all, jointly and in a democratic manner, must evolve what is due to each individual; and how fraternity should function in the associations, as we have called them. Only by viewing life in this way do we see it in its true perspective.

When we do so, however, we perceive that the theoretical belief that it is possible to accommodate all three ideals uniformly in the monolithic state has led to a contradiction within life. The three ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity can be understood in a vital way only when we realize that liberty has to prevail in spiritual life, equality in the political and legal sphere, and fraternity in the economic sphere. And this not in a sentimental manner, but in a way that leads to social systems within which men can experience their human dignity and their human worth. If we understand that the unified organism can come into being only when out of liberty spirit develops in a productive way, when equality functions in the political and legal sphere and fraternity in the economic one, in the associations, then we shall rise above the worst social dilemmas of the present.

For man gains a spiritual life that is rooted in truth only out of what can freely spring from him as an individual; and this truth can only make its appearance if it flows directly from men's hearts. The democratic tendency will not rest easy until it has established equality in the political and legal sphere. This can be achieved by rational processes; if not, we expose ourselves to revolutions. And in the economic field, fraternity must exist in the associations.

When this happens, the law—which is founded on a human relationship in which like meets like—will be a vital law. Any other kind of law turns into convention. True law must spring from the meeting of men, otherwise it becomes convention.

And true fraternity can found a way of life only if this derives from economic conditions themselves, through the medium of the associations; otherwise, the collaboration of men within groups will establish not a way of life, but a routine existence, such as is almost invariably the case at the present time.

Only when we have learnt to perceive the chaotic nature of social conditions that spring from the predominance of catchwords instead of truth in the spiritual sphere, convention instead of law in the political and legal sphere, and routine instead of a way of life in the economic sphere, shall we be seeing the problem clearly. And we shall then be following the only path that affords a correct approach to the social problem.

People will be rather shocked, perhaps, to find that I am not going to approach the social problem in the way many people think it ought to be approached. What I am saying now, however, is based solely on what can be learnt from reality itself with the aid of spiritual science, which is everywhere orientated towards reality. And it turns out that the fundamental questions of social life today are these:

How can we, by a correct articulation of the social organism, move from the all too prevalent catch-word (which is thrown up by the human personality when its creative spirit is subordinated to another) to truth, from convention to law, and from a routine existence to a real way of life?

Only when we realize that a threefold social organism is necessary for the creation of liberty, equality and fraternity, shall we understand the social problem aright. We shall then be able to link up the present time properly with the eighteenth century. And Middle Europe will then be able, out of its spiritual life, to reply, to the Western European demand for liberty, equality, fraternity: Liberty in spiritual life, equality in political and legal life, and fraternity in economic life.

This will mean much for the solution of the social problem, and we shall be able to form some idea of how the three spheres in the social organism can collaborate, through liberty, equality and fraternity, in our recovery from the chaotic situation—spiritual, legal, and economic—which we are in today.

The End.

Any one who speaks today about super-sensible worlds lays himself open at once to the quite understandable criticism that he is violating one of the most important demands of the age. This is the demand that the most important questions of existence shall be seriously discussed from a scientific point of view only in such a way that science recognizes its own limitations, has a clear insight into the fact that it must restrict itself to the sensible world of the earthly existence and would become the victim of a certain fantastic blunder if it should attempt to go beyond these limits. Now, precisely that type of spiritual-scientific conception in accordance with which I spoke at the last Vienna Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement, [West and East: Contrasting Worlds.] and shall speak again today, affirms with regard to itself not only that it is free from hostility toward scientific thinking and the scientific sense of responsibility of our times, but also that it does its work in complete harmony with what may be proposed as objectives by the most conscientious scientific demands of those very persons who take their stand on the platform of the most rigid scientific research. It is possible, however, to speak from various points of view in regard to the scientific demands of the times, imposed upon us by the splendid theoretical and practical results in the evolution of humanity which have come about in the course of the last three or four centuries, but especially during the nineteenth century. I shall speak, therefore, today in regard to super-sensible knowledge to the extent that this tends to fulfill precisely this demand, and I wish to speak in the next lecture about the super-sensible knowledge of the human being as a demand of the human heart, of human feeling, during the present age.

We can observe the magnificent contribution which has been bestowed upon us even up to the most recent time through scientific research—the magnificent contribution in the findings about interrelationships throughout the external world. But it is possible to speak also in a different sense regarding the achievements which have come about precisely in connection with this current of human evolution. For instance, we may call attention to the fact that, in connection with the conscientious earnest observation of the laws and facts of the external world of the senses, as this is afforded by natural science, very special human capacities have been developed, and that just such observation and experimentation have thrown a light also upon human capacities themselves. But I should like to say that many persons holding positions deserving of the greatest respect in the sphere of scientific research are willing to give very little attention to this light which has been reflected upon man himself through his own researches. If we only give a little thought to what this light has illuminated, we see that human thinking, through the very fact that it has been able to investigate in accordance with basic principles both narrowly restricted and also broadly expanded interrelationships—the microscopic and the telescopic—has gained immeasurably in itself, has gained in the capacity of discrimination, in power of penetration, the ability so to associate the things in the world that their secrets are unveiled, the capacity to determine the laws underlying cosmic relationships, and so forth. As this thinking is developed, we see it confronted with a demand—with which it is faced, indeed, by the most earnest research scientists: the demand that this thinking must develop as selflessly as possible in the observation of external nature and in experimentation in the laboratory, in the clinic, etc. And the human being has achieved tremendous power in this respect. He has succeeded in setting up more and more rules of such a character as to prevent anything of the nature of inner wishes of the heart, of opinions, perhaps even of fantasies regarding one's own being, such as arise in the course of thinking, from being carried over into what he is to establish by means of the microscope and the telescope, the measuring rule and the scales, regarding the interrelationships of life and existence.

Under these influences a type of thinking has gradually developed of which one must say that it has worked out its passive role with a certain inner diligence. Thinking in connection with observation, with experiment, has nowadays become completely abstract—so abstract that it does not trust itself to call forth anything of the nature of knowledge or of truth out of its own inner being.

It is this gradually developed characteristic of thinking which demands before everything else—so it appears at first—the rejection of all that the human being is in himself by reason of his inner nature. For what he himself thus is must be set forth in activity; this can really never exist wholly apart from the impulse of his will. Thus we have arrived at the point—and we have rightly reached this point in the field of external research—of actually rejecting the activity of thinking, although we became aware in this activity of what we ourselves signify as human beings in the universe, in the totality of cosmic relationships. In a certain sense, the human being has eliminated himself in connection with his research; he prohibits his own inner activity. We shall see immediately that what is rightly prohibited in connection with this external research must be especially cultivated in relationship to man's own self if he wishes to gain enlightenment regarding the spiritual, regarding the super-sensible, element of his own being.

But a second element in the nature of man has been obliged to manifest its special aspect, which is alien to humanity even though friendly to the world, in modern research: that is, the human life of sentiment, the human life of feeling. In this modern research, human feeling is not permitted to participate; the human being must remain cold and matter-of-fact. Yet one might ask whether it may not be possible to acquire within this human feeling forces useful in gaining knowledge of the world. If it must be said, on the one hand, that inner human willfulness plays a role in feelings, human subjectivity, and that feeling is the source of fantasy, it must be answered on the other hand that, although human feeling can certainly play no important role as it exists at first in every-day life or in science, yet, if we recall—as science itself has to present the matter to us—that the human senses have not always in the course of human evolution been such as they are today, but have developed from a relatively imperfect stage up to their contemporary state, that they certainly did not express themselves in earlier periods so objectively about things as they do today, an inkling may then come to birth within us that there may exist even within the life of subjective feeling something that might be evolved there-from, just like the human senses themselves, and which might be led over from an experience of man's own being to a grasp upon cosmic interrelationships in a higher sense. Precisely as we observe the withdrawal of human feeling in connection with contemporary research must the question be put as to whether some sort of higher sense might unfold within feeling itself if this were specially developed.

But very obviously do we find in connection with a third element of the being of man how we are driven by the altogether praiseworthy scientific view to something different. This is the will aspect of the life of the soul. Whoever is at home in scientific thinking knows how impossible it is for such thinking to proceed otherwise in grasping the inter-relationships of the world than in accordance with causal necessity. We connect in the most rigid manner phenomena existing side by side in space; we associate in the strictest sense phenomena occurring in succession in time. That is, we relate cause and effect according to their inflexible laws. Whoever speaks, not as a dilettante, but as one thoroughly at home in science knows what a tremendous power is exerted by the mere consideration of the realms of scientific fact in this manner. He knows how he is captivated by this idea of a universal causality and how he cannot then do otherwise than to subject everything that he confronts in his thinking to this idea of causality.

But there is human will, this human will which says to us in every moment of our waking life of day: “What you undertake in a certain sense by reason of yourself, by reason of your will, is not causally determined in the same sense applying to any sort of external phenomena of nature.” For this reason, even a person who simply feels in a natural way about himself, who looks into himself in observation free from preconception, can scarcely do otherwise than also to ascribe to himself, on the basis of immediate experience, freedom of will. But when he directs his glance to scientific thinking, he cannot admit this freedom of will. This is one of the conflicts into which we are brought by the condition of the present age. In the course of these two lectures we shall learn much more about these conflicts. But for one who is able to feel this conflict in its full intensity, who can feel it through and through—because he must be honest on the one side as regards scientific research, and on the other side as regards his self-observation—the conflict is something utterly confounding, so confounding that it may drive him to doubt whether life affords anywhere a firm basis from which one may search for truth.

We must deal with such conflicts in their right human aspect. We must be able to say to ourselves that research drives us to the point where we are actually unable to admit what we are every day aware of; that something else must somehow exist which offers other means of access to the world than what is offered to us in irrefutable manner in the order of external nature. Through the very fact that we are so forcibly driven by the order of nature itself into such conflicts, it becomes for us human beings of the present time a necessity to admit that it is impossible to speak about the super-sensible worlds as they have been spoken about up to a relatively recent time. We need to go back only to the first half of the nineteenth century to discover that personalities who, by reason of a consciousness in harmony with the period, were thoroughly serious in their scientific work called attention, nevertheless, to the super-sensible aspect of human life, to that aspect which opens up to the human being a view of the divine, of his own immortality; and that in this connection they always called attention to what we may at present designate as the “night aspects” of human life. Men deserving of the highest regard have called attention to that wonderful but very problematical world into which the human being is transferred every night: to the dream world. They called attention to many mysterious relationships which exist between this chaotic picture world of dreams, nevertheless, and the world of actuality. They called attention to the fact that the inner nature of the human organization, especially in illness, reflects itself, nevertheless, in the fantastic pictures of dreams, and how healthy human life enters into the chaotic experiences of dreams in the forms of signs and symbols. They pointed out that much which cannot be surveyed by the human being with his waking senses finds its place in the half-awake state of the soul, and out of such things conclusions were drawn. These things border upon what is the subject of study also today for many persons, the “subconscious” states of the life of the human soul, which manifest themselves in a similar way.

But everything which appears before the human being in this form, which could still give a certain satisfaction to an earlier humanity, is no longer valid for us. It is no longer valid for us for the reason that our way of looking into external nature has become something different. Here we have to look back to the times when there still existed only a mystically colored astrology. Man then looked into the world of the senses in such a way that his perception was far removed from the exactness which we demand of science today. For this reason, because he did not demand of himself in his sense life that complete clarity which we possess today, he could discover in a mystical, half-conscious state something from which he could draw inferences. This we cannot do today. Just as little as we are able to derive today from what science gives us anything else than questions in regard to the true nature of man, just so little can we afford to remain at a standstill at the point reached by science and expect to satisfy our super-sensible needs in a manner similar to that of earlier times.

That form of super-sensible knowledge of which I shall speak here has an insight into this demand of our times. It observes the form that has been taken on by thinking, feeling, and willing in man precisely by reason of natural science, and it asks on the other side whether it may be possible by reason of the very thing which has been achieved by contemporary humanity in thinking, feeling, and willing to penetrate further into the super-sensible realm with the same clarity which holds sway in the scientific realm. This cannot be achieved by means of inferential reasoning, by means of logic; for natural science justly points out its limitations with reference to its own nature. But something else can occur: that the inner human capacities may evolve further, beyond the point at which they stand when we are in the realm of ordinary scientific research, so that we now apply to the development of our own spiritual capacities the same exactness to which we are accustomed in connection with research in the laboratory and the clinic. I shall discuss this first in connection with thinking itself.

Thinking, which has become more and more conscious of its passive role in connection with external research, and is not willing to disavow this, is capable of energizing itself inwardly to activity. It may energize itself in such a way that, although not exact in the sense in which we apply this term to measuring and weighing in external research, it is exact in relationship to its own development in the sense in which the external scientist, the mathematician for example, is accustomed to follow with full consciousness every step in his research. But this occurs when that mode of super-sensible cognition of which I am here speaking substitutes a truly exact development of this thinking in place of the ancient vague meditation, the ancient indistinct immersion of oneself in thinking. It is possible here to indicate only in general principles what I have said in regard to such an exact development of thinking in my books Occult Science: An Outline and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and other books. The human being should really compel himself, for the length of time which is necessary for him—and this is determined by the varying innate capacities of people—to exchange the role of passive surrender to the external world, which he otherwise rightly assumes in his thinking, for that different role: that of introducing into this thinking his whole inner activity of soul. This he should do by taking into his mind day by day, even though at times only for a brief period, some particular thought—the content of which is not the important matter—and, while withdrawing his inner nature from the external world, directing all the powers of his soul in inner concentration upon this thought. By means of this process something comes about in the development of those capacities of soul that may be compared with the results which follow when any particular muscles of the human body—for instance, the muscles of the arms—are to be developed. The muscles are made stronger, more powerful through use, through exercise. Thus, likewise, do the capacities of the soul become inwardly stronger, more powerful by being directed upon a definite thought. This exercise must be so directed that we proceed in a really exact way, that we survey every step taken in our thinking just as a mathematician surveys his operations when he undertakes to solve a geometrical or arithmetical problem. This can be done in the greatest variety of ways. It may seem trivial when I say that something should be selected for this content of concentration that one finds in any sort of book—even some worthless old volume that we know quite certainly we have never previously seen. The important point is, not what the content of truth in the thing is, but the fact that we survey such a thought content completely. This cannot be done if we take a thought content out of our own memory; for very much is associated with such a thought in the most indeterminate way, very much that plays a role in the subconscious or the unconscious, and it is not possible to be exact if one concentrates upon such a thing. What one fixes, therefore, in the very center of one's consciousness is something entirely new, something that one confronts only with respect to its actual content, which is not associated with any experience of the soul. The matter of importance is the concentration of the forces of the soul and the strengthening which results from this. Likewise, if one goes to a person who has made some progress in this field and requests him to provide one with such a thought content, it is not well to entertain any prejudice against this. The content is in that case entirely new to the person concerned, and he can survey it. Many persons fear that they may become dependent in this way upon some one else who provides them with such a content. But this is not the case; in reality, they become less dependent than if they take such a thought content out of their own memories and experiences, in which case it is bound up with all sorts of subconscious experiences. Moreover, it is well for a person who has had some practice in scientific work to use the findings of scientific research as material for concentration; these prove to be, indeed, the most fruitful of all for this purpose.

If this is continued for a relatively long time, even for years perhaps—and this must be accompanied by patience and endurance, since it requires a few weeks or months in some cases before success is achieved, and in some cases years—it is possible to arrive at a point where this method for the inner molding of one's thoughts can be applied as exactly as the physicist or the chemist applies the methods of measuring and weighing for the purpose of discovering the secrets of nature. What one has then learned is applied to the further development of one's own thinking. At a certain point of time, the person then has a significant inner experience. This consists in the fact that he feels himself to be involved not only in picture-thinking, which depicts the external events and facts and which is true to reality in inverse proportion to the force it possesses in itself, in proportion as it is a mere picture; but one arrives now at the point of adding to this kind of thinking the inner experience of a thinking in which one lives, a thinking filled with inner power. This is a significant experience. Thinking thus becomes, as it were, something which one begins to experience just as one experiences the power of one's own muscles when one grasps an object or strikes against something. A reality such as one experiences otherwise only in connection with the process of breathing or the activity of a muscle,—this inner active something now enters into thinking. And, since one has investigated precisely every step upon this way, so does one experience oneself in full clarity and sober-mindedness of consciousness in this strengthened, active thinking. If the objection is raised, let us say, that knowledge can result only from observation and logic, this is no real objection; for what is now experienced we experience with complete inner clarity, and yet in such a way that this thinking becomes at the same time a kind of “touching with the soul.” In the process of forming a thought, it is as if we were stretching out a feeler—not, in this case, as when the snail stretches a feeler into the physical world, but as if a feeler were stretched out into a spiritual world, which is as yet present only for our feelings if we have succeeded to this stage, but which we are justified in expecting. For one has the feeling: “Your thinking has been transformed into a spiritual touching; if this can become more and more the case, you may expect that this thinking will come into contact with what constitutes a spiritual reality, just as your finger here in the physical world comes into contact with what is physically real.”

Only when one has lived for a time in this inwardly strengthened thinking does complete self-knowledge become possible. For we know then that the soul element has become by means of this concentration an experiential reality.

It is possible then for the person concerned to go forward in his exercises and to arrive at the point where he can, in turn, eliminate this soul content, put it away, in a certain sense render his consciousness void of what he himself has brought into this consciousness, this thought content upon which he has concentrated, and which has enabled him to possess a real thinking constituting a sense of touch for the soul. It is rather easy in ordinary life to acquire an empty consciousness; we need only to fall asleep. But it requires an intense application of force, after we have become accustomed to concentrating upon a definite thought content, to put away such a content of thought in connection with this very strengthened thinking, thinking which has become a reality. But we succeed in putting aside this content of thinking in exactly the same way in which we acquired at first the powerful force needed for concentration. But, when we have succeeded in this, something appears before the soul which has been possible previously only in the form of pictures of episodes in one's memory: the whole inner life of the person appears in a new way before the eyes of his soul, as he has passed through this life in his earthly existence since birth, or since the earliest point of time to which one's memory can return, at which one entered consciously into this earthly existence. Ordinarily, the only thing we know in regard to this earthly existence is that which we can call up in memory; we have pictures of our experiences. But what is now experienced by means of this strengthened thinking is not of the same kind. It appears as if in a tremendous tableau so that we do not recollect merely in a dim picture what we passed through ten years ago, for instance, but we have the inner experience that in spirit we are retracing the course of time. If some one carries out such an exercise in his fiftieth year, let us say, and arrives at the result indicated, what then happens is that time permits him to go back as if along a “time-path” all the way, for instance, to the experiences of his thirty-fifth year. We travel back through time. We do not have only a dim memory of what we passed through fifteen years earlier, but we feel ourselves to be in the midst of this in its living reality, as if in an experience of the present moment. We travel through time; space loses its significance, and time affords us a mighty tableau of memory. A precise picture of the life of the person is now created out of that which appears in an episodic manner, even according to scientific thinkers, when anyone is exposed to great terror, a severe shock, at the moment of drowning, for instance, when for some moments he is confronted by something of his entire earthly life in pictures appearing before his soul—to which he looks back later with a certain shuddering fascination. In other words, what appears before the soul in such cases as through a natural convulsion now actually appears before the soul at the moment indicated, when the entire earthly life confronts one as in a mighty tableau of the spirit, only in a time order. Only now does one know oneself; only now does one possess real self-observation.

It is quite possible to differentiate this picture of man's inner being from that which constitutes a mere “memory” picture. It is clear in the mere memory picture that we have something in which persons, natural occurrences, or works of art come upon us as if from without; in this memory picture what we have is the manner in which the world comes into contact with us. But in the super-sensible memory tableau which appears before a person, what confronts him is, rather, that which has proceeded from himself. If, for instance, at a certain definite point of time in his life he began a friendship with a beloved personality, the mere memory picture shows him how this person came to him at a certain point of time, spoke to him, what he owes to the person, etc. But, in this life tableau what confronts him is the manner in which he himself longed for this person, and how he took every step at last in such a way that he was inevitably led to that being regarding whom he had the knowledge that this being was suited to himself.

That which has taken place through the unfolding of the forces of the soul comes to meet one with exact clarity in this life tableau. Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them enlightenment in regard to much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even though this being of oneself confronts the searching eye with reproach.

This stage of cognition I have called imaginative knowledge, or imagination.

But one can progress beyond this stage. In that which we come to know through this memory tableau, we are confronted by those forces which have really formed us as human beings. While confronting this tableau of life, we know: “Within you those forces evolve which mold the substances of your physical body.” Within you, especially during childhood, those forces have evolved which have plastically modeled approximately up to the seventh year the nerve masses of the brain, which did not yet exist in well ordered form after your birth. We then cease at last to ascribe what works formatively upon the human being within to those forces which inhere in material substances. We cease to do this when we have this memory tableau before us, when we see how there stream into all the forces of nutrition and of breathing and into the whole circulation of the blood the contents of this memory tableau—which are forces in themselves, forces without which no single wave of the blood circulates and no single process of breathing occurs. We now learn to understand that man himself in his inner being consists of spirit and soul.

What now dawns upon one can best be described by a comparison. Imagine that you have walked for a certain distance over ground which has been softened by rain, and that you have noticed all the way tracks or ruts made by human feet or wagon wheels. Now suppose that a being should come from the moon and see this condition of the ground, but should see no human being. He would probably come to the conclusion that there must be all sorts of forces underneath the earth which have thrust up these traces and given this form to the surface of the ground. Such a being might seek within the earth for the forces which have produced the tracks. But one who sees into the thing knows that the condition was not caused by the earth but by human feet or wagon wheels.

Now, any one who possesses a view of things such as I have just described does not by any means for this reason look with less reverence, for example, upon the convolutions of the human brain. But, just as he knows that those tracks on the surface of the earth do not derive from forces within the earth, he now knows that these convolutions of the brain do not derive from forces within the substance of the brain, but that the spiritual-psychic entity of man is there, which he himself has now beheld, and that this works in such a way as to cause our brain to have these convolutions. This is the essential thing—to be driven to this view, so that we arrive at a conception of our own spirit-soul nature, that the eye of the soul is really directed to the spirit-soul element and to its manifestation in the external life.

But it is possible to progress still further. After having first strengthened our inner being through concentrating upon a definite content of thought, and then having emptied our consciousness, so that, instead of the images we ourselves have formed, the content of our life now appears before us, we can now put this memory tableau out of our consciousness, in turn, just as we previously eliminated a single concept, so that our consciousness was void of this. We can now learn to apply the powerful force so as to blot out from our consciousness that which we have come to know through a heightened self-observation as a spirit-soul being. In doing this, we blot out nothing less than the inner being of our own soul life. We learned first in concentration to blot out what is external, and we then learned to direct the look of our soul to our own spirit-soul entity, and this completely occupied the whole tableau of memory. If we now succeed in blotting out this memory tableau itself, there comes about what I wish to designate as the truly empty consciousness. We have previously lived in the memory tableau or in what we ourselves have set up before our minds, but now something entirely different appears. That which lived within us we have now suppressed, and we confront the world with an empty consciousness. This signifies something extraordinary in the experience of the soul. Fundamentally speaking, I can describe at first only by means of a comparison what now appears to the soul, when the content of our own soul is blotted out by means of the powerful inner force we apply. We need only to think of the fact that, when the impressions of the external senses gradually die away, when there is a cessation of seeing, hearing, perhaps even of a distinct sense of touch, we sink into a state closely resembling the state of sleep. In the present case, however, when we blot out the content of our own souls, although we do come to an “empty” state of consciousness, this is not a state of sleep. We reach what I might call the state of being merely awake—that is, being awake with an empty consciousness.

We may, perhaps, be enabled to conceive this empty consciousness in the following way. Imagine a modern city with all its noise and din. We may withdraw from the city, and everything becomes more and more quiet around us, but we finally enter, perhaps, a forest. Here we find the absolute opposite of the noises of the city. We live in complete inner stillness, in soundless quiet. If, now, I undertake to describe what follows, I must resort to a trivial comparison. We must raise the question whether this quiet, this stillness, can be changed still further into something else. We may designate this stillness as the zero point in our perception of the external world. But, if we possess a certain amount of property and we subtract from this property, it is diminished; as we take away still more, it is further diminished, and we finally arrive at zero and have nothing left. Can we then proceed still further? It may, perhaps, be undesirable to most persons, but the fact is that many do this: they still decrease their possessions by incurring debt. One then has less than zero, and one can still diminish what one has. In precisely the same way, we may at least imagine that the stillness, which is like the zero point of being awake, may be pushed beyond this zero into a sort of negative state. A super-stillness, a super-quietness may augment the quietness. This is what is experienced by one who blots out his own soul content: he enters into a state of quietness of soul which lies below the zero point. An inner stillness of soul in the most intensified degree comes about, during the state of wakefulness.

But this cannot be attained unless it is accompanied by something else. This can be obtained only when we feel that a certain state associated with the picture concepts of our own self passes over into another state. One who senses the first stage of the super-sensible within himself, who views this, is in a certain state of well-being, that well-being and inner blissfulness to which the various religious creeds refer when they call attention to the super-sensible and at the same time remind the human being that the super-sensible brings to him the experience of a certain blissfulness in his inner being. Indeed, up to the point where we exclude our own inner self, there was a certain sense of well-being, an intensified feeling of blissfulness. At that moment, however, where the stillness of soul comes about, this inner well-being is replaced completely by inner pain, inner deprivation, such as we have never previously known—the sense that one is separated from all to which one is united in the earthly life, far removed not only from the feeling of one's own body but from the feeling of one's own experiences since birth. And this signifies a deprivation which reaches the degree of tremendous pain of soul. Many shrink back from this stage, lacking the courage to make the transition from a certain lower clairvoyance and, after eliminating their own content of soul, to enter into that state of consciousness where resides that inner stillness. But, if we pass into this stage in full consciousness, there begins to enter, in place of imagination, that which I have called in the books previously mentioned inspiration—I trust you will not take offense at these terms—the experience of a real spiritual world. After one has previously eliminated the world of the senses and has substituted an empty consciousness, accompanied by inexpressible pain of soul, then does the external spiritual world come to meet us. In the state of inspiration we become aware of the fact that the human being is surrounded by a spiritual world just as the sense world exists for his external senses.

And the first thing, in turn, that we behold in this spiritual world is our own pre-earthly existence. Just as we are otherwise conscious of earthly experiences by means of our ordinary memory, so does a cosmic memory now dawn for us: we look back into pre-earthly experiences, beholding what we were as spirit-soul beings in a purely spiritual world before we descended through birth to this earthly existence, when as spiritual beings we participated in the molding of our own bodies. So do we look back upon the spiritual, the eternal, in the nature of man, to that which reveals itself to us as the pre-earthly existence, regarding which we now know that it is not dependent upon the birth and death of the physical body, for it is that which existed before birth and before conception, which made of this physical body derived from matter and heredity a human being. Now for the first time does one reach a true concept also of physical heredity, since one sees what super-sensible forces play into this—forces which we acquire out of a purely spiritual world, with which we now feel united just as we feel united with the physical world in the earthly life. Moreover, we now become aware that, in spite of the great advances registered in the evolution of humanity, much has been lost which belonged inherently to more ancient instinctive conceptions such as we can no longer use. The instinctive super-sensible vision of the humanity of earlier ages was confronted by this pre-earthly life as well as human immortality, regarding which we shall speak a little later. For eternity was conceived in ancient times in such a way that one grasped both its aspects. We speak nowadays of the deathlessness of the human soul—indeed, our language itself possesses only this word—but people once spoke, and the more ancient languages still continue to show such words, of birthlessness as the other aspect of the eternity of the human soul. Now, however, the times have somewhat changed. People are interested in the question what becomes of the human soul after death, because this is something still to come; but as to the other question, what existed before birth, before conception, there is less interest because that has “passed,” and yet we are here. But a true knowledge of human immortality can arise only when we consider eternity in both its aspects: that of deathlessness and that of birthlessness.

But, for the very purpose of maintaining a connection with the latter, and especially in an exact clairvoyance, still a third thing is necessary. We sense ourselves truly as human beings when we no longer permit our feelings to be completely absorbed within the earthly life. For that which we now come to know as our pre-earthly life penetrates into us in pictures and is added to what we previously sensed as our humanity, making us for the first time completely human. Our feelings are then, as it were, shot through with inner light, and we know that we have now developed our feeling into a sense organ for the spiritual. But we must go further and must be able to make our will element into an organ of knowledge for the spiritual.

For this purpose, something must begin to play a role in human knowledge which, very rightly, is not otherwise considered as a means of knowledge by those who desire to be taken seriously in the realm of cognition. We first become aware that this is a means of knowledge when we enter the super-sensible realms. This is the force of love. Only, we must begin to develop this force of love in a higher sense than that in which nature has bestowed love upon us, with all its significance for the life of nature and of man. What I shall have to describe as the first steps in the unfolding of a higher love in the life of man may seem paradoxical.

When you undertake, with complete sober-mindedness as to each step, to sense the world otherwise than is customary, you then come upon this higher form of love. Suppose you undertake in the evening, before you go to sleep, to bring your day's life so into your consciousness that you begin with the last occurrence of the evening, visualizing it as precisely as possible, then visualizing the next preceding in the same way, then the third from the last, thus moving backward to the morning in this survey of the life of the day, this is a process in which much more importance attaches to the inner energy expended than to the question whether one visualizes each individual occurrence more or less precisely. What is important is this reversal of the order of visualization. Ordinarily we view events in such a way that we first consider the earlier and then the subsequent in a progressive chain. Through such an exercise as I have just given you, we reverse the whole life: we think and feel in a direction opposite to the course of the day. We can practice this on the experiences of our day, as I have suggested, and this requires only a few minutes. But we can do this also in a different way. Undertake to visualize the course of a drama in such a way that you begin with the fifth act and picture it successively through the fourth, third, toward the beginning. Or we may represent a melody to ourselves in the reverse succession of tones. If we pass through more and more such inner experiences of the soul in this way, we shall discover that the inner experience is freed from the external course of nature, and that we actually become more and more self-directing. But, even though we become in this way more and more individualized and achieve an ever increasing power of self-direction, yet we learn also to give attention to the external life in more complete consciousness. For only now do we become aware that, the more powerfully we develop through practice this fully conscious absorption in another being, the higher becomes the degree of our selflessness, and the greater must our love become in compensation. In this way we feel how this experience of not living in oneself but living in another being, this passing over from one's own being to another, becomes more and more powerful. We then reach the stage where, to Imagination and Inspiration, which we have already developed, we can now unite the true intuitive entrance into the other being: we arrive at Intuition, so that we no longer experience only our self, but also learn—in complete individualization yet also in complete selflessness—to experience the other being.

Here love becomes something which gradually makes it possible for us to look back even further than into the pre-earthly spiritual life. As we learn in our present life to look back upon contemporary events, we learn through such an elevation of love to look back upon former earth lives, and to recognize the entire life of a human being as a succession of earthly lives. The fact that these lives once had a beginning and must likewise have an end will be touched upon in the next lecture. But we learn to know the human life as a succession of lives on earth, between which there always intervene purely spiritual lives, coming between a death and the next birth. For this elevated form of love, lifted to the spiritual sphere and transformed into a force of knowledge, teaches us also the true significance of death. When we have advanced so far, as I have explained in connection with Imagination and Inspiration, as to render these intensified inner forces capable of spiritual love, we actually learn in immediate exact clairvoyance to know that inner experience which we describe by saying that one experiences oneself spiritually, without a body, outside the body. This passing outside the body becomes in this way, if I may thus express it, actually a matter of objective experience for the soul. If we have once experienced in actual knowledge outside the body—”clairvoyantly,” I mean—this spiritual element in existence, we know the significance of the event of laying aside the physical body in death, of passing through the portal of death to a new, spiritual life. We thus learn, at the third stage of an exact clairvoyance, the significance of death, and thus also the significance of immortality, for man.

I have desired to make it transparently clear through the manner of my explanation that the mode of super-sensible cognition about which I am speaking seeks to bring into the very cognitional capacities of the human being something which works effectually, step by step, as it is thus introduced. The natural scientist applies his exactness to the external experiment, to the external observation; he wishes to see the objects in such juxtaposition that they reveal their secrets with exactitude in the process of measuring, enumerating, weighing. The spiritual-scientist, about whom I am here speaking, applies his exactness to the evolution of the forces of his own soul. That which he makes out of himself for the purpose of causing a spiritual world and, with this, the eternal being of man, the nature of human immortality, to appear before his soul, he makes with precision, if I may use an expression of Goethe. At every step which the spiritual-scientist thus takes, in order that the spiritual world may at last lie outspread before the eyes of the soul, he feels obligated to be just as conscientious in regard to his knowledge as a mathematician must be at every step he takes. For just as the mathematician must see clearly into everything that he writes on the paper, so must the spiritual-scientist see with complete exactitude into everything that he makes out of his powers of cognition. He then knows that he has formed an “eye of the soul” out of the soul itself with the same inner necessity with which nature has formed the corporeal eye out of bodily substance. And he knows that he can speak of spiritual worlds with the same justification with which he speaks of a physical-sensible world in relationship to the physical eye. In this sense the spiritual research with which we are here concerned satisfies the demands of our age imposed upon us by the magnificent achievements of natural science—which spiritual science in no wise opposes but, rather, seeks further to supplement.

I am well aware that every one who undertakes to represent anything before the world, no matter what his motive may be, attributes a certain importance to himself by describing this as a “demand of the times.” I have no such purpose, neither shall I have such a purpose in my next lecture; [The second lecture in this brochure.] on the contrary, I should like to show that the demands of the times already exist, and the very endeavor of spiritual science at every step it takes is to satisfy these demands of the times. We may say, then, that the spiritual-scientist whom it is our purpose to discuss here does not propose to be a person who views nature in a dilettante or amateur fashion. On the contrary, he proposes to advance further in true harmony with natural science and with the same genuine conscientiousness. He desires truly exact clairvoyance for the description of a spiritual world. But it is clear to him at the same time that, when we undertake to investigate a human corpse in a laboratory for the purpose of explaining the life which has disappeared from it, or, when we look out into cosmic space with a telescope, we then develop capacities which tend to adapt themselves at first solely to the microscope or telescope, but which possess an inner life and which misrepresent themselves in their existent form. When we dissect a human corpse, we know that it was not nature that made the human being into this bodily form, but that the human soul, which has now vanished, made it. [That is, nature did not create the wonderful human body; it was created by the soul.] We interpret the human soul from what we have here as its physical product, and any one would be irrational who should assume that this molding of the human physical forces and forms had not arisen out of that which preceded the present state of this human being. But everything that we hold in the background while we investigate dead nature with those forces in connection with which we rightly deny our inner activity creates the potentiality, through this very act of holding in reserve, for a further development of the soul forces of the human being. Just as the seed of the plant lies out of sight under the earth when we have laid it in the soil, and yet will become a plant, so do we plant a seed in the soul in the very action of conscientious scientific research. He who is a serious scientist in this sense has within himself the germ of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. He needs only to develop the germ. He will then know that, just as natural science is a demand of the times, so is super-sensible research likewise. What I mean to say is that every one who speaks in the spirit of natural science speaks also in the spirit of super-sensible research, only he does not know this. And that which constitutes an unconscious longing in the innermost depths of many persons today—as will be manifest in the next public lecture—is the impulse of super-sensible research to unfold out of its germ.

To those very persons, therefore, who oppose this spiritual research from a supposedly scientific standpoint, one would like to say, though not with any bad intention, that this brings to mind an utterance in Goethe's Faust all too well known, but which would be applied in a different sense:

The little man would not sense the Devil
Even if he held him by the throat.

Now, I do not care to go into that. But what is contained in this expression confronts us in a different application in that which exists today as a demand of the times: that those who speak rightly today about nature are really giving expression, though unconsciously, to the spirit. One would like to say that there are many who do not wish to notice the “spirit” when it speaks, although they are constantly giving expression to the spirit in their own words!

The seed of super-sensible perception is really far more widespread today than is supposed, but it must be developed. The fact that it must be developed is really a lesson we may learn from the seriousness of the times as regards external experiences. As I have already said, I should like to go into the details next time; but we may still add in conclusion that the elements of a fearful catastrophe really speak to the whole of humanity today through various indications in the outside world, and that it is possible to realize that tasks at which humanity in the immediate future will have to work with the greatest intensity will struggle to birth out of this great seriousness of the times. This external seriousness with which the world confronts us today, especially the world of humanity, indicates the necessity of an inner seriousness. And it is about this inner seriousness in the guidance of the human heart and mind toward man's own spiritual powers, which constitute the powers of his essential being, that I have wished to speak to you today. For, if it is true that man must apply his most powerful external forces in meeting the serious events awaiting him over the whole world, he will need likewise a powerful inner courage. But such forces and such courage can come into existence only if the human being is able to feel and also to will himself in full consciousness in his innermost being, not merely theoretically conceiving himself but practically knowing himself. This is possible for him only when he comes to know this being of his as coming out of that source from which it does truly come, from the source of the spirit, only when in ever increasing measure, not only theoretically but practically, he learns to know in actual experience that man is spirit, and can find his true satisfaction only in the spirit; that his highest powers and his highest courage can come to him only out of the spirit, out of the super-sensible.

On last Wednesday I had the opportunity to explain to you how a super-sensible knowledge may come into existence out of the further development of those capacities of the human soul which belong to our every-day life, and which are recognized also in science when methodically applied. I undertook to show how a systematic further development of these capacities of the soul actually brings about for the human being a form of perception whereby he can become aware of a super-sensible world just as he becomes aware of the physical sensible world environing him by means of his physical senses. Through such vision we penetrate upward not only to an abstract sort of conviction that, in addition to the world of the senses, there exists also a world of the spirit, but to acquisition of real knowledge, to a real experience, of spiritual beings, which constitute the environment of man himself to the extent that he lifts himself up into a condition of spirituality, just as plants and animals constitute his environment in the physical world.

Such a super-sensible knowledge is something different in its entire nature from that which we designate as knowledge in ordinary life and for our every-day consciousness, as well as in ordinary science.

In this ordinary knowledge we come into possession, in a certain sense, of ideas—for example such ideas as embrace the laws of nature. But this possession of ideas does not really penetrate into the soul in such a way as to become an immediate power of the soul, comparable as a spiritual power to muscular force as this passes over into activity. Thoughts remain rather shadowy, and every one knows through immediate experiences how indifferent, in a certain sense, is the reaction of the human heart to thoughts when we are dealing with matters which affect the human heart in the profoundest degree.

Now, I think I have shown already in the first lecture that, when a human being actually penetrates into the spiritual world by means of such a perception as we have in mind here, he then becomes aware of his super-sensible being as it was before it descended to the earthly existence. And the fact that he achieves for himself something of this kind as regards his own self in its relationship to the spiritual world, does not leave his heart, the needs of his profoundest sensibilities, to the same extent unaffected, as in the case of abstract forms of knowledge. It is certainly true that one who has himself led a life devoted to the acquisition of knowledge does not undervalue all the inner drama of the soul associated with the struggle for knowledge even in the ordinarily recognized sense, yet the knowledge that we thus acquire remains, nevertheless, mere pictures of the external world. Indeed, if we are scientifically educated at the present time, we are generally proud of the fact that these pictures merely reflect, in a certain sense, quite objectively the external world and do not dart with such inner force through the life of the soul as, in the case of the physical body, the circulating blood drives its pulsing waves through man's being. The fact is that what is here meant by super-sensible knowledge is something which acts upon the human being in a manner entirely unlike that of ordinary knowledge. And, in order that I may make myself perfectly clear precisely in reference to this point, I should like to begin with a comparison—which is, however, something more than a comparison, something that fits the matter completely in its reality.

I should like to begin with the fact that the human being, even in ordinary life, lives in two states of consciousness—we might say three states, but let us consider sleeping and dreaming as constituting a single state of consciousness—that he is separated completely from the external world during sleep, and that a world existent only within him, reveals its effects in dreams in a grotesque and often chaotic manner. Even though we are in the same space with many other persons, our dream world belongs to us alone; we do not share it with the other persons. And a profounder reflection upon the world of dreams is the very thing that may show us that what we have to consider as our own inner human nature is connected with this dream world. Even the corporeal nature of man is reflected in a remarkable way in dreams: it is mirrored in fantastic pictures. One condition or another affecting an organ, a condition of illness or of excitation, may emerge in a special symbol during a dream; or some noise occurring near us may appear in a dream in a very dramatic symbolism. The dream creates pictures out of our own inner nature and out of the external world. But all of this is intimately connected, in turn, with the whole course of our life upon earth. From the most remote epochs of this life the dream draws the shadows of experiences into its chaotic but always dramatic course. And, the more deeply we penetrate into all this, the more are we led to the conclusion that the innermost being of man is connected, even though in an instinctive and unconscious manner, with that which flows and weaves in dreams.

One who has the capacity, for example, for observing the moment of waking and, from this point on, fixing the eye of the mind upon the ordinary daily life, not in the superficial way in which this usually occurs, but in a deeper fashion, will come to see that this waking life of day is characterized by the fact that what we experience in a wholly isolated manner during sleep and during dreams, in a manner that we can share with other persons at most only in special instances,—that this soul-spiritual element sinks down into our corporeal being, inserts itself in a way into the will, and thereby also into the forces of thought and the sense forces permeated by the will, and thus enters indirectly, through the body, into a relationship with the external world. Thus does the act of waking constitute a transition to an entirely different state of consciousness from that which we have in dreams. We are inserted into the external course of events through the fact that we participate, with our soul element, in the occurrences of our own organisms, which are connected, in turn, with external occurrences. Evidences of the fact that I am really describing the process in a wholly objective way can, naturally, not be obtained by the manner of abstract calculation, nor in an experimental way; but they are revealed to one who is able to observe in this field—particularly one who is able to observe how there is something like a “dreaming while awake,” a subconscious imagining, a living in pictures, which is always in process at the bottom of the dry, matter-of-fact life of the soul, of the intellect. The situation is such that, just as we may dive down from the surface of a stream of water into its profounder depths, so may we penetrate from our intellectual life into the deeper regions of the soul. There we enter into something which concerns us more intimately than the intellectual life, even though its connection with the external world is less exact. There we come also upon everything which stimulates the intellectual life to its independent, inventive power, which stimulates this life of the intellect when it passes over into artistic creation, which stimulates this intellectual life even—as I shall have to show later—when the human heart turns away from the ordinary reflections about the universe and surrenders itself to a reverent and religious veneration for the spiritual essence of the world.

In the act of waking in the ordinary life the situation is really such that, through the insertion of our soul being into the organs of our body, we enter into such a connection with the external world that we can entrust, not to the dream, but only to the waking life of day, responsibility for the judgment which is to be passed upon the nature of the dream, upon its rightness and wrongness, its truth and untruth. It would be psychopathic for any one to suppose that, in the chaotic, though dramatic, processes of the dream something “higher” is to be seen than that which his waking experience defines as the significance of this life of dreams.

In this waking experience do we remain also—at about the same level of experience—when we devote ourselves to the intellectual life, to the ordinary life of science, to every-day knowledge. By means of that absorption, immersion, and I might say strengthening of the soul about which I spoke on the previous occasion, the human being exercises consciously at a higher level for the life of his soul something similar to what he exercises unconsciously through his bodily organization for the ordinary act of waking. And the immersion in a super-sensible form of knowledge is a higher awaking. Just as we relate any sort of dream picture to our waking life of day, through the help of our memory and other forces of our soul, in order to connect this dream picture, let us say, with some bodily excitation or external experience, and thus to fit it into the course of reality, so do we arrive by means of such a super-sensible cognition as I have described at the point where we may rightly fit what we have in our ordinary sensible environment, what we fix by means of observation and experiment, into a higher world, into a spiritual world in which we ourselves are made participants by means of those exercises of which I spoke, just as we have been made participants in the corporeal world in the ordinary waking by means of our own organism. Thus super-sensible knowledge really constitutes the dawn of a new world, a real awaking to a new world, an awaking at a higher level. And this awaking compels him who has awaked to judge the whole sensible-physical world, in turn, from the point of view of this experience, just as he judges the dream life from the point of view of the waking life. What I do here during my earthly life, what appears to me by means of my physical knowledge, I then learn to relate to the processes through which I have passed as a spirit-soul being in a purely spiritual world before my descent into the earthly world, just as I connect the dream with the waking life. I learn to relate everything that exists in physical nature, not “in general” to a fantastic world of spirit, but to a concrete spiritual world, to a spiritual world which is complete in its content, which becomes a visible environment of the human being by reason of the powers of knowledge I have described as Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.

But, just as a person feels himself in ordinary life to be in different states of soul when awake and when dreaming, so does the whole state of soul become different when one arrives at this higher awaking. For this reason, in describing super-sensible knowledge in the manner that I have employed here, we do not describe merely the formal taking of pictures of the super-sensible world, but the transition of a person from one state of consciousness into another, from one condition of soul into another. In this process, however, even those contents of the soul in which one is absorbed in ordinary life become something entirely different. Just as one becomes a different person in ordinary life through awaking, so does one become, in a certain sense, a different human being through this super-sensible knowledge. The concepts and ideas that we have had in ordinary consciousness are transformed. There occurs not only a conceptual revolution in a person consisting in the fact that he understands more, but also a revolution in his life. This penetrates into the profoundest human conceptions. It is precisely in the profoundest human conceptions, I wish to say, in the very roots of the soul being, that a person is transformed through the fact that he is able to enter into the sphere of this super-sensible knowledge—something which happens, of course, only for momentary periods in one's life.

Here I must call your attention to two conceptions that play the greatest imaginable role in every-day life. These are conceptions completely and profoundly valid in ordinary life which take on an utterly different form the moment one ascends into the super-sensible world. These are the two concepts on the basis of which we form our judgments in the world: the concepts true and false, right and wrong. I beg you not to imagine that in this explanation I intend, through a frivolous handling of the problem of knowledge, to undermine the validity of the concepts true and false, right and wrong. To undermine something which is wholesome in ordinary life is by no means in keeping with a genuine super-sensible knowledge. This higher knowledge enables us to acquire something in addition for ordinary life, but never subtracts from it. Those persons who—whether really or in sentimentality—become untrue in their ordinary lives, unpractically mystical for this aspect of life, are also unsuited for a genuine super-sensible knowledge. A genuine super-sensible knowledge is not born out of fantastic persons, dreamers, but out of those very persons who are able to take their places in their full humanity in the earthly existence, as persons capable in real life. In other words, it is not our purpose to undermine what we experience in our every-day lives, and what is bound up in its very depths with the concepts true and false, right and wrong; on the contrary, truthfulness in this sphere, I should like to emphasize, is strengthened in one's feelings by that very thing which now comes about in connection with a higher knowledge by reason of a metamorphosis, a transformation of the concepts true and false, right and wrong.

When we have really entered into this higher, super-sensible world, we do not any longer say in such an abstract way that a thing is true or false, that it is right or wrong, but the concept of the true and the right passes over into a concept with which we are familiar in ordinary life, though in a more instinctive way; only, this concept belonging to the ordinary life is transmuted into a spiritual form. True and right pass over into the concept healthy; false and wrong pass over into the concept diseased. In other words, when we reflect about something in ordinary life—feel, sense, or will something—we say: “This is right, that is wrong.” But, when we are in the realm of super-sensible knowledge, we do not arrive at this impression of right or wrong but we actually reach the impression that something is healthy, something else is diseased.

You will say that healthy and ill are concepts to which a certain indefiniteness is attached. But this is attached to them only in the ordinary life or the ordinary state of consciousness.

The indefiniteness ceases when the higher knowledge is sought for in so exact a manner as I have explained in the first lecture. Precision then enters also into what we experience in this realm of higher knowledge. Healthy and ill,—these are the terms we apply to what we experience in association with the beings of the super-sensible world of whom we become aware through such a form of knowledge.

Just think how deeply that which becomes an object of super-sensible knowledge may affect us: it affects us as intimately as health and illness of the body. In regard to one thing that is experienced in the super-sensible, we may say: “I enter livingly into it. It benefits and stimulates my life; it elevates my life. I become through it in a certain way more ‘real.’ It is healthful.” In regard to something else I say: “It paralyzes—indeed, it kills—my own life. Thereby do I recognize that it is something diseased.” And just as we help ourselves onward in the ordinary world through right and wrong, just as we place our own human nature in the moral and the social life, so do we place ourselves rightly in the super-sensible world through healthy and ill. But we are thus fitted into this super-sensible world with our whole being in a manner far more real than that in which we are fitted into the sense world. In the sense world we separate ourselves from things in this element of the right or the wrong. I mean to say that right does not benefit us very intensely and wrong does not cause us much distress—especially in the case of many persons. In the super-sensible world it is by no means possible that experiences shall touch us in this way. There our whole existence, our whole reality, enters into the manner in which we experience this super-sensible world. For this realm, therefore, all conflict of opinion ceases as to whether things are reality or mere phenomena; whether they manifest to us merely the effects produced upon our own sense organs; and the like—questions about which I do not wish to speak here because the time would not suffice. But everything about which people can argue in this way in relation to the physical reality,—to carry on such discussion with reference to the spiritual world really has no significance whatever for the spiritual, super-sensible world. For we test its reality or unreality through the fact that we can say: “One thing affects me wholesomely, another thing in an ill way—causing injury,” I mean to say, taking the word in its full meaning and weight. The moment a person ascends to the super-sensible world, he observes at once that what was previously knowledge void of power becomes an inner power of the human soul itself. We permeate the soul with this super-sensible knowledge as we permeate our bodies with blood. Thus we learn also in such knowledge the whole relationship of the soul and the spirit to the human body; we learn to see how the spirit-soul being of man descends out of a super-sensible prenatal existence and unites with the inherited body. In order to see into this, it is necessary first to learn to know the spirit-soul element so truly that through this reality, as healthy or diseased, we experience the actuality in our own—I cannot say body here, but in our own soul.

Supersensible knowledge, therefore—although we make such a statement reluctantly, because one seems at once to fall into sentimentality—is really not a mere understanding but an ensouling of the human being. It is soul itself, soul content, which enters into us when we penetrate to this super-sensible knowledge. We become aware of our eternity, our immortality, by no means through the solution of a philosophical problem; we become aware of them through immediate experience, just as we become aware of external things in immediate experience through our senses.

What I have thus described is exposed, of course, to the objection: “To be sure, one may speak in this way, perhaps, who participates in such super-sensible knowledge; but what shall any one say to these things who is himself not as yet a participant in this super-sensible knowledge?” Now, one of the most beautiful ways in which human beings can live together is that in which one person develops through contact with the other, when one goes through the process of becoming, in his soul nature, through the help of the other. This is precisely the way in which the human community is most wonderfully established. Thus we may say that, just as it is not possible for all persons to become astronomers or botanists and yet the results of astronomy and botany may possess importance and significance for all persons—at least, their primary results—and can be taken in by means of the insight possessed by a sound human intellect, it is likewise possible that a sound human mind and heart can directly grasp and assimilate what is presented by a spiritual-scientist who is able to penetrate into the super-sensible world. For the human being is born, not for untruth, but for truth! And what the spiritual-scientist has to say will always be clothed, of course, in such words and combinations of words that it diverges, even in its formulation, from what we are accustomed to receive as pictures out of the sensible-physical world. Therefore, as the spiritual-scientist lays open what he has beheld, this may work in such a way upon the whole human being, upon the simple, wholesome human mind, that this wholesome human mind is awakened—so awakened that it actually discovers itself to be in that state of waking of which I have spoken today. I must repeat again and again, therefore, that, although I have certainly undertaken to explain in such books as Occult Science—an Outline, and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and in other volumes, how it is possible to arrive through systematic exercises at what I must designate as “looking into the spiritual world,” so that every one possesses the possibility today, up to a certain degree, of becoming a spiritual-scientist, yet it is not necessary to do this. For a sound human constitution of soul is such that what the spiritual-scientist has to say can be received when it comes into contact with the human soul—provided only that the soul is sufficiently unprejudiced—as something long known. For this is precisely the peculiar characteristic of this spiritual research, this super-sensible knowledge to which we are referring: that it brings nothing which is not subconsciously present already in every human being. Thus every one can feel: “I already knew that; it is within me. If only I had not permitted myself to be rendered unreceptive through the authoritarian and other preconceptions of natural science, I should already have grasped, through one experience or another, some part of what this spiritual research is able to present as a connected whole.”

But the fact of such a thing as this transformation of the concepts true and false into the healthy and the diseased renders the inner experience of the soul more and more intense. At a higher level man places himself more intensely within a reality than he places himself in the physical reality through the ordinary waking of the daily life. In this way, feelings, sentiments, experiences of the soul are generated in relationship to these items of knowledge, which are altogether exact, just as they are generated through our being confronted by external things. That which the super-sensible knowledge can bestow lays hold upon the whole human being whereas it is really only the head that is laid hold of by what the knowledge of the senses can bestow. I trust you will permit me to visualize this relationship of super-sensible knowledge to the complete human being by referring to something personal, although the personal in this realm is also factual, for the facts are intensely bound up with the personal.

In order to render it clear that super-sensible knowledge cannot really be a mere head-knowledge, but lays hold upon the human being in a vastly more living and intense way than head-knowledge, I should like to mention the following. Whoever is accustomed to a living participation in ordinary knowledge—as every true super-sensible knower should really be—knows that the head participates in this ordinary knowledge. If he then ascends, especially if he has been active through his entire life in the ordinary knowledge, to super-sensible knowledge, the situation becomes such that he must exert all his powers in order to keep firm hold upon this super-sensible knowledge which comes upon him, which manifests itself to him. He observes that the power by means of which one holds fast to an idea about nature, to a law of nature, to the course of an experiment or of a clinical observation, is very slight in comparison with the inner force of soul which must be unfolded in order to hold fast to the perception of a super-sensible being. And here I have always found it necessary not only, so to speak, to employ the head in order to hold firmly to these items of super-sensible knowledge, but to support the force which the head can employ by means of other organs—for example by means of the hand. If we sketch in a few strokes something that we have reached through super-sensible research, if we fix it in brief characteristic sentences or even in mere words, then this thing—which we have brought into existence not merely by means of a force evoked through the nerve system applied in ordinary cognition, but have brought into existence by means of a force drawing upon a wide expanse of the organism as a support for our cognition,—this thing becomes something which produces the result that we possess these items of super-sensible knowledge not as something momentary, that they do not fall away from us like dreams, but that we are able to retain them. I may disclose to you, therefore, that I really find it necessary to work in general always in this way, and that I have thus produced wagon-loads of notebooks in my lifetime which I have never again looked into. For the necessary thing here lies in the activity; and the result of the activity is that one retains in spirit what has sought to manifest itself, not that one must read these notes again. Obviously, this writing or sketching is nothing automatic, mediumistic, but just as conscious as that which one employs in connection with scientific work or any other kind of work. And its only reason for existence lies in the fact that what presses upon us in the form of super-sensible knowledge must be grasped with one's whole being. But the result of this is that it affects, in turn, the whole human being, grasps the whole person, is not limited to an impression upon the head, goes further to produce impressions upon the whole human life in heart and mind. What we experience otherwise while the earthly life passes by us, the joy we have experienced in connection with one thing or another, joy in all its inner living quality, the pain we have experienced in lesser or deeper measure, what we have experienced through the external world of the senses, through association with other persons, in connection with the falling and rising tides of life,—all this appears again at a higher level, at a soul-spiritual level, when we ascend into those regions of the super-sensible where we can no longer speak of the true and the false but must speak of the healthy and the diseased.

Especially when we have passed through all that I described the last time, especially that feeling of intense pain at a certain level on the way to the super-sensible, do we then progress to a level of experience where we pass through this inner living dramatic crisis as super-sensible experiences and items of knowledge confront us: where knowledge can bestow upon us joy and pleasure as these are possible otherwise only in the physical life; or where knowledge may cause the profoundest pain; where we have the whole life of the soul renewed, as it were, at a higher level with all the inner coloring, with all the inner nuances of color, with all the intimate inwardness of the life of the soul and the mind that one enjoys through being rooted together with the corporeal organization in every-day existence. And it is here that the higher knowledge, the super-sensible experience comes into contact with that which plays its role in the ordinary life as the moral existence of the human being; this moral existence of the human being with everything connected with it, with the religious sentiment, with the consciousness of freedom.

At the moment when we ascend to a direct experience of the health-giving or the disease-bringing spiritual life, we come into contact with the very roots of the moral life of man, the roots of the whole moral existence. We come into contact with these roots of the moral existence only when we have reached the perception that the physical life of the senses and that which flows out of the human being is really, from the point of view of a higher life, a kind of dream, related to this higher life as the dream is related to the ordinary life. And that which we sense out of the indefinite depths of our human nature as conscience, which enables us to conduct our ordinary life, which determines whether we are helpful or harmful for our fellow men, that which shines upward from the very bottom of our human nature, stimulating us morally or immorally, becomes luminous; it is linked up in a reality just as the dream is linked up in a reality when we wake. We learn to recognize the conscience as something existing in man as a dimly mirrored gleam of the sense and significance of the spiritual world—of that super-sensible world to which we human beings belong, after all, in the depths of our nature. We now understand why it is necessary to take what the knowledge of the sense world can offer us as a point of departure and to proceed from this to a super-sensible knowledge, when we are considering the moral order of the world and desire to arrive at the reality of this moral world order.

This is what I endeavored to set forth thirty years ago as an ethical problem, merely as a moral world riddle, in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Without taking into account super-sensible knowledge, I sought by simply following out the moral impulses of the human being to establish the fact that the ethical arises in every instance, not out of the kind of thinking which simply absorbs external things, external occurrences or the occurrences of one's own body, but out of that thinking life of the soul which lays hold upon the heart and the will and yet in its very foundation is, none the less, a thinking soul life, resting upon its own foundations, rooted in the spiritual nature of the world. I was compelled to seek at that time in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity for a life of the soul independent of the corporeal being of man, a life that seems, indeed, a shadowy unreality in comparison with the solid reality of the external world of the senses, but which is rooted in its true nature in the very spiritual foundations of the universe. And the fact that the ethical impulses proceed from this kind of thinking, purified from the external world of the senses but wholly alive within man, gives to the human being his ethical character. When we learn to see now through super-sensible knowledge that what is rooted in us as our conscience is, in its essence, the mirroring within our inner being of the real spiritual world which weaves and breathes throughout the world of the senses, we then learn to recognize the moral nature of man as that which forever unites us without our knowing this, even when we sense it only as a still small voice within us, with that spiritual world which can be laid open to us through super-sensible knowledge.

But let no one say that this super-sensible knowledge is meaningless, therefore, for our moral life for the very reason that we have the voice of conscience, for the reason that we possess the practical intentions of life for its individual situations. Especially will one who sees that the ancient spiritual traditions, super-sensible knowledge handed down from primeval times and continuing until now, have faded away and continue their existence today as pale religious creeds, will be able to see that man stands in need of a new stimulus in this very sphere. Indeed, many persons are the victims of a great delusion in this field. We can see that scientific knowledge, which is considered by many today as the only valid knowledge—that the form which this scientific knowledge has taken on, with its Ignorabimus, “We cannot know”—has caused many persons to doubt all knowledge, in that they say that moral impulses, religious intentions, cannot be gained out of any knowledge whatever, but that these ethical-religious impulses in the conduct of life must be developed out of special endowments belonging to man, independent of all knowledge. This has gone so far, indeed, that knowledge is declared not to possess any capacity for setting in motion in the human being such impulses as to enrich him in his moral-religious existence through the fact that he takes in his own spiritual being—for this is really what he does take in with super-sensible knowledge. It has gone so far that people doubt this possibility! On the other hand, however, especially if one is not such a practical person as the so-called practical persons of our present-day life, who merely follow a routine, if one takes the whole world into account, on the contrary, as a genuinely practical person—the world consisting of body, soul, and spirit—one will certainly see that, in the individual life situations for which we may be permeated in actual existence with moral-religious content, more is needed than the faded traditions, which cannot really any longer inspire the human being in a completely moral sense. One recognizes something of this sort.

Permit me to introduce here a special example.

Out of everything that fails to satisfy us in that which confronts us today also in the educational life, what concerned us when the Waldorf School was to be founded in Stuttgart on the initiative of Emil Molt was to answer the question how a human being ought really to be educated. In approaching this task, we addressed this question to the super-sensible world of which I am here speaking. I will mention only briefly what sort of purposes had then to be made basic.

First of all, the question had to be raised: “How is a child educated so that he becomes a real human being, bearing his whole being within himself but also manifesting his whole being in the ethical-religious conduct of life?” A genuine knowledge of man in body, soul, and spirit was necessary for this. But such a knowledge of man in body, soul, and spirit is entirely impossible today on the basis of what is considered valid—most of all such a knowledge as may become actually practical so that it enables one to lay hold upon the manifold duties of life. In connection with this let me discuss the question by pointing out to you very briefly that what we so generally feel today to be a just ground for our pride—external science, dealing through observation and experimentation with material substance—is not qualified to penetrate into the secrets of the material itself. What I shall introduce here now will be stated very briefly, but we can find it set forth with all necessary proofs in my writings, especially in the volume Riddles of the Soul [Von Seelenratseln—not yet translated.] When we pay attention nowadays to ordinary science, we receive the conception, for example, that the human heart is a kind of pump, which drives the blood through the organs like a pumping machine. Spirit-science, such as we have in mind, which introduces us to a view of what constitutes not only the physical body of the human being, but his spirit-soul nature, shows us how this spirit-soul nature permeates the corporeal nature, how the blood is driven through the human being, not as if by the action of the “heart pumping machine,” but through the direct action of the spirit-soul nature itself; how this spirit-soul nature so lays hold upon the circulation of the blood that it is this spirit-soul element which constitutes the force that causes the blood to pulse through our organism. But the heart is then looked upon as something like a sense organ. As I consciously perceive the external world with my eyes, and through my concepts make this something of my own, thus do I likewise perceive through this inner sense organ of the heart—again, in an unconscious way—that which I develop unconsciously through my spirit-soul forces as the pulsation in my blood. The heart is no pump; the heart is the inner sense organ through which we perceive what the spirit-soul nature develops inwardly in connection with our blood, just as we perceive through the external senses the external world. The moment that we pass over from an intellectual analysis of the human organism to a vision of the whole human being, the heart reveals itself in its true essence, in its true significance—as an inner sense organ. In the heart the effects of the circulation of human blood, with its life impulses, are manifest; the heart is not the instrument causing this pulsation.

This is an example of the tragic fact that the very science bearing a materialistic coloring is not able to penetrate into the secrets of the material life; an example of the fact that we do not penetrate into the secrets of the material life until we do this by observing the spirit in its true work, in its creative work upon matter.

When we become aware through such super-sensible knowledge, on the one hand, of the creative spirit in the very course of material occurrences, we become aware on the other hand of the power-filled spirit—not merely of the abstractly thinking spirit—of the real spirit in its essence. Then only does there result a genuine knowledge of man, such a knowledge as is needed if we wish to develop in the growing child that which can live and breathe in the human being until death, full of power, suited to life, corresponding with reality. Such an intensive vitalizing of the knowledge of man causes the educator to see the child as something fundamentally different from what he is to the merely external observer. In a fundamental sense, from the very first moment of the earthly life, the growing child is the most wonderful earthly phenomenon. The emergence out of the profoundest inner nature, at first mysteriously indeterminate, of something that renders the indeterminate features more and more determinate, changing the countenance, at first so expressionless, into an expressive physiognomy, the manner in which the vague, unskillful movements of the limbs come to correspond to purpose and objective,—all this is something wonderful to behold. And a great sense of responsibility is necessary in bringing this to development. If we stand in the presence of the developing human being in such a way that we say, with all the inner fervor associated with super-sensible knowledge: “In this child there is manifest that which lived as spirit and soul in the pre-earthly existence in super-sensible beauty, that which has left behind, in a certain sense, its super-sensible beauty, has submerged itself in the particular body that could be given to it in the course of physical heredity; but you, as a teacher, must release that which rests in the human body as a gift of the gods, in order that it may lay hold year by year, month by month, week by week upon the physical body, may permeate this, may be able to mold it plastically into a likeness of the soul, you have to awaken still further in the human being that which is manifest in him,”—if we stand thus before the child, we then confront the task of educating the child, not with intellectual principles, but with our whole human nature, with the fullness of our human heart and mind, with a comprehensive sense of human responsibility in confronting the problem of education. We then gradually come to know that we do not have to observe only the child if we wish to know what we must do with him at any particular time, but that we must survey the whole human being. This observation is not convenient. But it is true that what is manifest in a person under certain circumstances in the period of tenderest childhood, let us say, first becomes manifest in a special form as either health-giving or disease-bringing only in high old age after it has long remained hidden in the inner being. As educators, we hold in our hands not only the immediate age of childhood but the whole earthly life of the human being. Persons who frequently say from a superficial pedagogical point of view that we must present to the child only what it can already understand make a very serious mistake. Such persons live in the moment, and not in the observation of the whole human life. For there is a period of childhood, from the change of teeth until adolescence, when it is exceedingly beneficial to a child to receive something that it does not yet understand, something that cannot yet be made clear to it, on the authority of a beloved teacher—to the greatest blessing for this human life, because, when the child sees in the self-evident authority of a teacher and educator the embodiment of truth, beauty, and goodness, in a certain sense, when it sees the world embodied in the teacher, the effect of this is the awaking of the forces of life. This is not something which contradicts human freedom; it is something which appeals to self-evident authority, which in its further development becomes a fountainhead of strength for the whole life. If, at the age of 35 years, we bring something into our heart and mind which is suited by its nature only now to be understood by us as mature persons, but which we took into our hearts upon the authority of a beloved teacher personality even in our eighth year,—if we bring that up into consciousness which we have already possessed, which lived in us because of love and now for the first time at a mature age is understood by us, this understanding of what was present in us in germ is the fountain for an inner enrichment of life. This inner enrichment of life is taken away from the human being when, in a manner reducing things to trivialities, only that is introduced to the child which it can already understand. We view the mode of a child's experience in the right way only when we are able to enter into the whole human being and, most of all, into that which enters as yet primarily into the human heart.

For example, we become acquainted with persons who radiate a blessing when they enter the company of other persons. Their influence is quieting, bestowing peace even upon excited persons whose tempers clash with one another. When we are really able to look back—as I said, this is not convenient—and see how such persons, apart from their innate qualities, have developed such a quality also through education, we often go back into a very tender age of the life where certain teacher personalities have stood very close to these children in their inner heart life, so that they learned to look up with reverence to these personalities. This looking up, this capacity for reverence, is like a mountain brook which flows into a crevice in the rock and only later appears again on the surface. What the soul acquired then in childhood exerts its influence below in its depths, manifesting itself only in high old age, when it becomes a power that radiates blessing.

What I have just introduced to you might be indicated in a picture if we say that, in relationship to the universe as well, the human being may be so educated that he may transmute into forces of blessing in high old age the forces of reverence of his tender childhood. Permit me to indicate in a picture what I mean. No one will be able to open his hands in blessing in old age who has not learned in tender childhood to fold his hands in reverent prayer.

This may indicate to us that in such a special case a life task, education, may lead to an ethical-religious attitude of mind; may indicate how that which our hearts and minds, and our wills, become as a result of entering livingly into spirit-knowledge may enter with vital reality into our conduct of life, so that what we develop otherwise, perhaps, only in an external and technical way shall become a component part of our moral-religious conduct of life. The fact, however, that instruction and education in the Stuttgart Waldorf School, and in the other schools which have arisen as its offshoots, have been brought into such an atmosphere does not by any means result in a lack of attention to the factual, the purely pedagogical; on the contrary, these are given full consideration. But the task of education has really become something here which, together with all its technique of teaching, its practice of instruction and everything methodical, at the same time radiates an ethical-religious atmosphere over the child. Educational acts become ethical-religious acts, because what is done springs from the profoundest moral impulses. Since the practice of teaching flows from a teacher-conscience, since the God-given soul nature is seen in the developing human being, educational action becomes religious in its nature. And this does not necessarily have any sentimental meaning but the meaning may be precisely what is especially necessary for our life, which has become so prosaic: that life may become in a wholly unsentimental sense a form of divine service to the world, as in the single example we have given of education, by reason of the fact that spiritual science becomes a light illuminating the actions of our life, the whole conduct of life. Since super-sensible knowledge leads us, not to abstractions, but to human powers, when these forms of knowledge gained through super-sensible cognition simply become immediate forces of life, they can flow over, therefore, into our whole conduct of life, permeating this with that which lifts the human being above his own level—out of the sensible into the super-sensible—elevating him to the level of a moral being. They may bring him to the stage where he becomes in consecrated love one with the Spirit of the World, thus arriving at truly religious piety.

Indeed, this is especially manifest also in education. If we observe the child up to his seventh year, we see that he is wholly given over, in a physical sense, to his environment. He is an imitator, an imitative being even in his speech. And when we observe this physical devotion, when we observe what constitutes a natural environment of the child, and remains such a natural environment because the soul is not yet awake, then we feel inclined to say that what confronts us in a natural way in the child is the natural form of the state of religious consecration to the world. The reason why the child learns so much is that it is consecrated to the world in a natural-religious way. Then the human being separates himself from the world; and, from the seventh year on, it is his educational environment which gives a different, dimly sensed guidance to his soul. At the period of adolescence he arrives at the stage of independent judgment; then does he become a being who determines his own direction and goal from within himself. Blessed is he if now, when freed from his sensuous organism, he can follow the guidance of thought, of the spirit, and grow into the spiritual just as he lived in a natural way while a child in the world,—if he can return as an adult in relationship to the spirit to the naturalness of the child's feeling for the world! If our spirit can live in the spirit of the world at the period of adolescence as the body of a child lives in the world of nature, then do we enter into the spirit of the world in true religious devotion to the innermost depths of our human nature: we become religious human beings.

We must willingly accept the necessity of transforming ordinary concepts into living forces if we wish to grasp the real nature, the central nerve, of super-sensible knowledge. So is it, likewise, when we view the human being by means of what I described the last time as super-sensible knowledge in Imagination. When we become aware that what lives in him is not only this physical body which we study in physiology, which we dissect in the medical laboratory and thereby develop the science of physiology, when we see that a super-sensible being lives in him which is beheld in the manner I have described, we then come to know that this super-sensible being is a sculptor that works upon the physical body itself. But it is necessary then to possess the capacity of going over from the ordinary abstract concepts which afford us only the laws of nature to an artistic conception of the human being. The system of laws under which we ordinarily conceive the human physical form must be changed into molded contents; science must pass over into art. The super-sensible human being can not be grasped by means of abstract science. We gain a knowledge of the super-sensible being only by means of a perception which leads scientific knowledge wholly over into an artistic experience. It must not be said that science must remain something logical, experimental. Of course, such a demand can be set up; but what does the world care about what we set up as “demands!” If we wish to gain a grasp of the world, our process must be determined in accordance with the world, not in accordance with our demands or even with our logical thoughts; for the world might itself pass over from mere logical thoughts into that which is artistic. And it actually does this. For this reason, only he arrives at a true conception of life who—by means of “perceptive power of thought” to use the expression so beautifully coined by Goethe—can guide that which confronts us in the form of logically conceived laws of nature into plastically molded laws of nature. We then ascend through art—in Schiller's expression “through the morning glow of the beautiful”—upwards into the land of knowledge, but also the land of reverent devotion, the land of the religious.

We then learn to know—permit me to say this in conclusion—what a state of things we really have with all the doubts that come over a human being when he says that knowledge can never bestow upon us religious and ethical impulses, but that these require special forces far removed from those of knowledge. I, likewise, shall never maintain, on the basis of super-sensible knowledge, that any kind of knowledge as such can guide a human being into a moral and religious conduct of life. But that which really brings the human being into a moral and religious conduct of life does not belong in the realm of the senses: it can be investigated only in the realm of the super-sensible. For this reason a true knowledge of human freedom can be gained only when we penetrate into the super-sensible. So likewise do we gain real knowledge of the human conscience only when we advance to the sphere of the super-sensible. For we arrive in this way at that spiritual element which does not compel the human being as he is compelled by natural laws, but permits him to work as a free being, and yet at the same time permeates him and streams through him with those impulses which are manifest in the conscience. Thus, however, is manifested to man that which he vaguely senses as the divine element in the world, in his innocent faith as a naive human being imbued with religious piety.

It is certainly true that one does not stand in immediate need of knowledge such as I have described in order to be a religious and pious person; it is possible to be such a person in complete naiveté. But that is not the state of the case, as history proves. One who asserts that the religious and ethical life of man must come to flower out of a different root from that of knowledge does not realize on the basis of historical evolution that all religious movements of liberation—naturally, the religious aptitudes always exist in the human being—have had their source in the sphere of knowledge as super-sensible sources of knowledge existed in the prehistorical epochs. There is no such thing as a content of morality or religion that has not grown out of the roots of knowledge. At the present time the roots of knowledge have given birth to scientific thinking, which is incapable, however, of reaching to the spirit. As regards the religious conduct of life, many people cling instead to traditions, believing that what exists in traditions is a revelation coming out of something like a “religious genius.” As a matter of fact, these are the atavistic, inherited traditions. But they are at the present time so faded out that we need a new impulse of knowledge, not working abstractly, but constituting a force for knowledge, in order that what exists in knowledge may give to the human being the impulse to enter even into the conduct of the practical life with ethical-religious motives in all their primal quality.

This we need. And, if it is maintained on the one hand—assuredly, with a certain measure of justification—that the human being does not need knowledge as such in order to develop an ethical-religious conduct of life, yet it must be maintained, on the other hand, as history teaches in this respect also, that knowledge need not confuse the human being in his religious and his ethical thinking. It must be possible for him to gain the loftiest stages of knowledge, and with this knowledge—such, naturally, as it is possible for him to attain, for there will always remain very much beyond this—to arrive at the home in which he dwelt by the will of God and under the guidance of God before he had attained to knowledge. That which existed as a dim premonition, and which had its justification as premonition, must be found again even when our striving is toward the loftiest light of knowledge. It will be possible then for knowledge to be something whose influence does not work destructively upon the moral conduct of life; it may be only the influence which kindles and permeates the whole moral-religious conduct of life. Through such knowledge, however, the human being will become aware of the profounder meaning of life—about which it is permissible, after all, to speak: he will become aware that, through the dispensation of the mysteries of the universe, of the whole cosmic guidance, he is a being willed by the Spirit, as he deeply senses; that he can develop further as a being willed by the Spirit; that, whereas external knowledge brings him only to what is indefinite, where he is led into doubt and where the unity which lived within him while he possessed only naive intimations is torn apart, he returns to what is God-given and permeated of spirit within himself if he awakens out of the ordinary knowledge to super-sensible knowledge.

Only thus can that which is so greatly needed by our sorely tested time really be furthered—a new impulse in the ethical-religious conduct of life: in that, just as knowledge has advanced up to the present time from the knowledge of vague premonition and dream to the wakeful clarity of our times, we shall advance from this wakeful clarity to a higher form of waking, to a state of union with the super-sensible world. Thus, likewise, will that impulse be bestowed upon the human being which he so imperatively requires especially for the renewal of his social existence at this time of bitter testing for humanity in all parts of the world—indeed, we may say, for all social thinking of the present time. As the very root of an ethical-religious conduct of life understanding must awaken for the fact that the human being must pass from the ordinary knowledge to an artistic and super-sensible awaking and enter into a religious-ethical conduct of life, into a true piety, free from all sentimentality, in which service to life becomes, so to speak, service to the spirit. He must enter there in that his knowledge strives for the light of the super-sensible, so that this light of the super-sensible causes him to awaken in a super-sensible world wherein alone he may feel himself to be a free soul in relationship to the laws of nature, wherein alone he may dwell in a true piety and a genuine inwardness and true religiousness as a spirit man in the spirit world.